Responsa
by bhut
Summary: A responsa to all of those Nick/Jenny/Steven and Abby/Connor stories out in the fandom. J/N and A/C couples at first.
1. Chapter 1

**In the eye of the beholder**

_Disclaimer: All of the characters belong to Impossible Pictures_

-1-

Whenever Helen Cutter saw Jenny Lewis alongside Nick and his crew, she always thought of an exotic bird hanging around a bunch of street pigeons or starlings, because she wanted to fit in.

Jenny Lewis wants to radiate confidence and self-power, and hence she wears those deeply-colored power suits, bright make-up and high heels, but Helen is an anthropologist (a doctor of anthropology, thank you very much!), she studies people for a living, and she can see that underneath all that get-up is a skinny, bony woman with hardly any bite to her bark – in a good hard grip, even in a good hard _human_ grip Jenny Lewis would crack, like an egg – and probably die… but Helen Cutter would not do such a thing: she is not a deliberate murderer after all.

Seeing Steven die was enough, and on the other hand – why should she care about the fate of Jenny Lewis? She had re-made Claudia Brown into this human doll because she was pissed at Nick: Nick is a comfortable man and a man who likes comfort, and Jenny Lewis, with all of her sharp angles and corners – nothing plush or voluptuous about that woman-girl, oh no! – is not very comfortable at all. Seeing the two of them create discomfort in each other almost makes Helen's day – almost.

Still, Helen is canny and experienced enough to know that Nick got that Scottish impetus: once he starts to roll for real, he'll wear down Jenny's sharp angles and corners, and turn her into a "poor-man's-copy" of Claudia Brown, so to speak. When that happens, Jenny Lewis will essentially die – in spirit, and not in body, and that makes Helen Cutter somehow uncomfortable, even though Jenny Lewis means nothing to her: she is not a deliberate murderer after all.

-2-

Whenever Jenny Lewis saw Helen Cutter opposing Nick, she remembered the old adage that family members often grew to resemble one another as the time passes, and in case of Helen Cutter, it could not be more obvious. There is nothing womanly about Helen Cutter, not in her clothes (aside from bras and such-like), nor in her hair (where does she get it cut) nor in her make-up (absent utterly and completely). Helen Cutter is as manly as a woman can be, and whenever she ends-up opposing Nick, the physical and behavioral similarities between husband and wife – all right, _former _husband and wife – are clear to see.

Now, to Nick, Helen Cutter is the personification of all that is wrong in the world, but Jenny knows different: Nick and Helen are bitter divorcees, and now that Helen seems to begin to stop being bitter and grow distant and independent instead, Nick is disturbed. He too is trying to move-on, but he is slower than his ex-wife, he is lagging behind, and that just makes things worse.

For her own part, Jenny partly pities Helen Cutter, and partly envies her. The woman – for all of her posturing – is obviously as lonely as a sphinx and just as well-liked. Nick, of course, is no paragon of communication either, but he has to, while Helen doesn't, and for all of her claims for manipulation, Jenny can see that Helen can only manipulate people if they would let her, and no other way – and that is why Jenny, a public relations specialist, whose job is to manipulate people, pities Nick's soon-to-be-officially ex-wife.

And yet Jenny also envies Helen, and is even a bit intimidated by her – just a bit. The woman is knowledgeable and strong just like Nick, if she had been just a bit more social and less bitter, the two would have probably made-up and left Jenny out in the cold, unneeded by anyone – and Jenny knows that it's probably selfish, but she wants to be needed, she wants to be admired by others, even if those others are Nick Cutter and his friends-…

And most of all, the most envious thing in Helen Cutter – according to Jenny Lewis, of course – is the woman's self-independence from others. Jenny Lewis would have paid dearly to have that kind of self-esteem, which she sorely lacks. That is why she wants to keep Helen Cutter on the out – because if their positions are reversed, Jenny knows that _she _won't make it.

-3-

Abby Maitland doesn't know what to make out of Caroline Steele, and she is even no longer certain that she hates her.

For a long time, Caroline Steele stood for everything that Abby was against – a smooth, cultured young woman of the mainstream variety, who managed to trick Connor into liking her, even if just for a while.

And then it was all over – Connor was with her, and Caroline just faded away into the background: Abby won!.. only to have Caroline return – first as the supplier of dogs to captain Becker's forces and second as the amateur advisor on the physics of time (she studied it for two weeks…which is two weeks more than the rest of them combined). Seeing Caroline back in the saddle made Abby feel angry. Seeing her treating Connor without any romantic overtures made Abby feel cheated out of her victory.

Abby Maitland doesn't know what to make out of Caroline Steele – the other woman does not try to be her enemy or friend, and Abby doesn't know what else is there. But she does know that has to do something about it fast – or she will never know peace in the ARC.

-4-

Caroline Steele knows exactly what to make out of Abby Maitland – she had seen plenty of her kind back in college.

Abby Maitland, Caroline knows, is a technological-minded person, even if her technology is lizards (seriously, what's up with _that_?). Abby Maitland approaches everything in a scientific way, aiming to sort and label everything in a right place – and according to her, Caroline's place is that of The Other Woman.

Unfortunately for Abby, Caroline knows that you can be a good loser like her mother – or a bad loser like her other mother, and lose even what under other circumstances can be salvaged. Yes, she honestly misses Connor's companionship (even if it was artificially grafted in the beginning) and his happy-go-lucky approach to life, but she will not play The Other Woman in Abby Maitland's court – she still has her dignity, thank you very much!!

And finally, Caroline knows one last thing: Abby Maitland doesn't know how to be a lover, it doesn't come with a manual or a sensei, like, say, lizard breeding (or dog breeding, for that matter) or fighting. As a consequence, she is hopelessly floundering, (especially because Caroline isn't much help either one has to admit) doing all the mistakes that Caroline's own parents have once made, without hitting on any solutions. Sooner or later, Caroline suspects, Abby and Connor's relationship with fall into pieces, without her having to lift a finger to do anything.

And once that happens, Caroline thinks, once Abby and Connor will break what could have been warm and wonderful instead, then she, Caroline Steele, will feel very cold and hollow indeed.

To be continued…


	2. Helen

**Helen**

_All characters belong to Impossible Pictures._

1.

The good – no, the _best_ thing about having a non-linear life was that after you die once upon a time, you can then weather the fall-back, looking at all of your chronological clones and decide:

"I need a vacation."

And that was what Helen Cutter was doing – having a vacation, not too far from the edge of the great northern glacier, watching daily the hunts of the short-faced bears and American scimitar-toothed cats on the herds of the great mastodons that wandered past through the coniferous woods and the prehistoric – well, currently contemporary – giant beavers that built huts in the local lakes and rivers. The weather was cool and crisp, the gnats and other biting flies were easily chased away by the bonfire smoke and liberal applications of red ochre, and the winter was months away – a time period long enough for Helen not even undertake her specialized tricks to improve her lot in life, for it was currently _that_ nice indeed!

And yet, despite all the peace, and quiet, and serenity, Helen felt that something was missing from her life, a hole that she had desperately tried to dam-up with her let's-get-rid-of-humanity project – a project that had failed spectacularly over three million years ago in the past when she died and had been forced to admit that she...

...that she would gladly give up almost everything that she had created in order to bring Stephen back – but she couldn't, she wouldn't dare, for Stephen was a bright young man while she was a woman who had hit the line of her menopause a long while ago, and that time was moving ever further into the past still, thus it wouldn't be fair to have Stephen to be tied to her-

As unwanted and unwelcomed thoughts rushed through Helen's head and the meteor shower from the Orion's cluster rushed before her line of sight, filling her heart even further with loneliness, she reckoned that she ought to move – but when and where?

The late Triassic time period? No, what _was_ she thinking? She hated that time even more than she had hated the late Permian time period, in no small part because she had almost died there. This, naturally, had put late Triassic into her 'least favourite time period' category, beaten only by the late Eocene...

No, she wasn't going to go to the late Triassic. Maybe she should actually go forwards, not backwards – say, just a few thousand years to New Zealand of the Maori: she and Kurangaituku had never really finished their 'interaction'...

As Helen was leaning more and more towards going to New Zealand and acquire some new company for herself, a new sound resonated in the silence of the early dawn – the sound of the alarm at the other end of one of her chronological tunnels, the one leading to the late Cretaceous sea coast.

Helen's frown deepened – she never cared much for the late Cretaceous: you get some of the finer details wrong, and you end right under the meteorite... yet the alarm was worth checking out, for should something like a tyrannosaur hatchling come up the tunnel, she'd have another mess on her hands...

And so, Helen Cutter went through the time to the late Cretaceous.

2.

Throughout her long travels across various lands and times, Helen had hit on the idea of leaving supply caches close to her usual time anomaly sites, not counting the human era (there she would just usually crash at her former apartment with Nick, the latter being blissfully unaware of her doing that) and thus as soon as she was able to achieve it, that was what she did.

Consequently, as soon as Helen had arrived in the late Cretaceous, she ended up in a small coastal cave, albeit one far enough from the high tide line, stocked with a small food supply (mostly energy bars and the like) as well as a medical supply and a couple of spare clothes sets. In short, it was neat, and orderly, and no representative of the contemporary fauna was mucking around, messing it up – but then, what had set off the alarm?

A loud commotion from outside clearly provided a clue to Helen's musings. Still tentative – one never knew when one will run into a tyrannosaur when one is in the late Cretaceous – Helen ventured outside...

...and found herself almost on top of a starting feeding frenzy. As usual when it came to feeding frenzies on the Cretaceous coastal territories, the hesperornis were the main driving force there. Black, flightless seabirds as long as a man was tall, their long beaks still had quite developed teeth, and their small brains still had knowledge of how to use them. In short, as far as birds go, the hesperornis are nasty and should be kept as far away as possible.

On top of the hesperornis, there were several pterosaurs flying above the flightless birds. _Their_ beaks were toothless, but sharp, and the muscles powering their jaws and necks were strong enough to tear away strips of meat, especially one that was slightly decomposing long enough to sate their appetites.

Flightless birds and flying pterosaurs... for now, actually, that was that. The feeding frenzy had yet started, so the bigger predators – the dinosaurs and the marine reptiles – hadn't yet had a chance to catch a whiff of whatever the smaller carnivores were eating...

Just what _were_ those smaller carnivores eating – or preparing to eat anyways? Feeling now more idly curious rather than concerned, Helen carefully edged closer and took a look.

And stared, her eyes actually opening wide. Lying on the prehistoric shore, in the middle of the rapidly encroaching hesperornis and descending pterosaurs, was a human.

A human that was very well familiar to Helen.

A human that was badly bleeding below the waist – and not because of beaks, whether toothed or not.

A human that was going to die unless Helen stepped in and did something.

For a few long heartbeats Helen was very tempted to just turn around and leave – that certainly counted as 'something'... but then she realized that she could not, and so she opted for a different choice of action instead:

Picking up a rock, Helen lashed out and hit one of the pterosaurs on the delicate wing bones, causing it to fall down on top of several flightless seabirds. Immediately, they attacked the downed flier, and the rest of their cohorts followed, with the pterosaurs attacking them instead.

But Helen ignored their squawks and squabbles as well as the developing battle. Instead, she walked over to the still badly bleeding Jenny Lewis and carried her back to her local supply cache...


	3. Jenny

**Jenny**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures._

1.

Jenny dreamt.

Jenny dreamt that she was drowning and a monstrous fish-lizard thing was coming from the deep aquatic abyss to bite her in two and she was too slow and couldn't feel her legs and-

Suddenly, a sharp stench cut across her nasal nerves, across her face, and her eyes fluttered open of her own accord – only to see a hand belonging to a very familiar face thrust something that resembled a freshly laid bird dropping from beneath her nose.

"Ah, good, I can see that you're awake," Helen Cutter said calmly, "as well as alive, and sane, I presume? You _are_ sane, aren't you?"

"Helen," Jenny said sternly, but somehow managed to gasp pathetically instead. "I was looking for you."

"You found me," Helen said, as she moved away from Jenny and flung the droppings out of the grotto in which they were currently staying. "Now what?"

Ever since the episode with the giganotosaurus, as well as the development regarding the futuristic fungus, Jenny was trying to be more spontaneous, like Danny Quinn had been in those circumstances, and so she told it to the other woman.

Helen's eyebrows curled up and her eyes widened in surprise – "Ms. Lewis, my respect for you have gone up a notch or two," she told the former PR agent. "I never thought that you had it in you."

Jenny felt her own eyebrows rise up. "What, no criticisms or comments about my stupidity, how I went unprepared and ended-up-"

"I did the same thing – only I've been relatively luckier," Helen said dismissively. "I didn't end up in the sea, I ended on dry ground...and that was the end of my luck for a long, _long_ while. Better thank your guardian angel that you didn't end up learning how to build a primitive boat among the giant marine reptiles of late Jurassic, for example."

"You mean like the one that almost bit me in two?"

"No, that one only lacerated your legs, albeit pretty badly – I had to use most of my current supplies to patch you up – oh, and do you want a souvenir? It came from your leg-" and Helen thrust a still-slightly-bloody tooth under Jenny's nose.

"That's a dinosaur's tooth?" Jenny gasped.

"No, dinosaurs live on land, what attacked you lives fully in the water, therefore it is not a dinosaur," Helen said patiently. "Also, your attacker wasn't fully grown, most likely, otherwise he would've killed you then and there, never mind an escape-" she paused. "Which leads me to my next question – why have you come?"

"For you."

"Ah," Helen said quietly. "I see. And now that you found me, now what?"

Jenny worked her mouth, clearly searching for the right words to say. When she finally spoke, she asked this question:

"Who was Claudia Brown?"

"She would've been you, if your grandmother hadn't been able to stand up to _her_ mother and marry the man she was 'supposed' to."

"Oh? But the only way grandma was able to do that was of her uncle Jonas, who went crazy-"

"Yes, and in one version he found a time anomaly and had his mental breakdown in the Pliocene, while in this one he didn't."

Jenny stiffened. "Were you behind it?"

"No, it was just an unfortunate side effect, you could say," Helen said miserably. "I never had anything against Claudia-you having it with Nick, as long as I could've tried it out with Stephen..." her voice trailed away, all rigidness and control drained from her posture, and Jenny saw just an ordinary woman, getting on in her old – well, middle – age, lonely as the rocky walls of their grotto... in other words someone, whom Jenny had suspected all along.

"There, there," Jenny decided to get up to console Helen and froze. "What's with my legs?"

"I had to sterilize all the wounds," Helen said, her voice once more having that matter-of-fact quality, "as well as cut out the reptile's teeth – there were two or three still stuck there, as I showed you. To do that, I had to apply fire, since I was short of medical supplies, and so I had to numb your legs by cutting off blood circulation to them, and then I bandaged up the wounds – fortunately I did have plaster of Paris-"

"Stop," Jenny said firmly and really looked at her legs: they were naked, save for white-coloured bands of plaster wrapped around them in several places; fortunately, she still had her panties on-

"I am wearing your shirt," Jenny said slowly, "and the panties aren't mine either. Have you-?"

"Your things were soaked with seawater and blood and several sorts of dirt, so I threw them out and changed you," Helen shrugged.

"_Changed me_?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's nothing that I haven't seen on myself, anyways," Helen said calmly.

Jenny felt blood rush to her cheeks and the righteous anger beginning to burn in her belly, when there was a thump and a commotion outside. "What's going on?" she said momentarily distracted from her embarrassment.

"Oh, just the T-Rex waking up."

"Say _what_?"

"It's just a juvenile," Helen said, a trifle defensively. "It sometimes comes down here to hunt for food. In this case, your body attracted quite a few of seabirds and pterosaurs and they, in turn, have attracted the dinosaur."

"Oh," Jenny said weakly. "Wait – seabirds?"

"Yes, they have already evolved by now, and as nasty as any man-sized creatures can get," Helen said, as she walked deeper into the grotto, from where some interesting smells were emanating. "Incidentally, do you want some hot soup?"

2.

"This is really isn't how I pictured our confrontation," Jenny said slowly as she carefully ate the hot and filling soup from a plate. "I mean, even if I had entertained the notion of us sitting down and sharing a meal, somehow I didn't picture myself being that pathetic at that moment."

"You should've met in on my third jump, to late Jurassic," Helen said softly, with a hint of some rather self-depreciating humour. "Now then I was pathetic, and a bit crazy as well – you see, I was just getting the hand of the whole time anomaly situation, and my clothes were almost gone from all the exposure, and there were those meat-eating dinosaurs-"

"Helen," Jenny said firmly as she twisted around to fully face the other woman, "why _did_ you kill Nick?"

There was a pause and Jenny gulped, suddenly feeling that a direct confrontation was not such a good idea in her condition.

"It all started," Helen's voice was deep and emotionless, "after Claudia became you – I grew too arrogant, too self-confident – I allied myself with Leek and assisted him. Because I grown too arrogant, Nick was able to trick me easily, and I, in my pride, tried to get him killed. It failed, _spectacularly,_ and Stephen died instead-"

"And that's why you killed Nick, eventually?"

"I guess I sort of went insane, or at least delusional, in all that self-denial afterwards," Helen admitted quietly. "Killing Nick made it only worse. The pair of them just haunted my dreams – only when Danny had killed me, have I finally peace, somewhat."

"You got to stop saying that Danny killed you," Jenny managed to say. "It's creepy."

"Ms. Lewis, let me explain." Helen drew a pair of lines on the grotto's floor. "The line on the left is time flowing from past to present to future. The one on the right is a typical life, going from birth to death, in an opposite direction. Now, _here_," she put a dot on the left line, "is when I was born, _here_" another dot "is the Triassic, where I arrived through my first time anomaly, _here_," a third dot, "is our current position, and _here_" a fourth and final dot, "is when I died. What strikes you first?"

Jenny just stared at the four dots. "They, they aren't in order!"

"I prefer the term non-linear," Helen said with a small smile. "When you're living a regular, linear life, then yes, death _is_ final, but a non-linear one, ah, that is different. I have died in the Pliocene Africa, three million years BC, but that isn't the end: I have mastered time to the point where I can survive even death itself – to a point. For example, the great K/T extinction that has killed off the dinosaurs as well as roughly-" she froze. It was quiet, too quiet outside, as well as too dark.

"Helen?" Jenny asked in a small voice. "That's _not_ the start of that extinction, is it?"

Instead of replying, Helen half-turned around. "Hop on," she said, "we're sneaking a peek outside."

"Say what? You can't be serious-"

"Just hop on!"

3.

The meteorite was huge – maybe not as big as the moon, but bigger than ten or fifteen Big Ben clock towers put together, all cragged and ragged and red-coloured rock... because it was also red-hot, as opposed to the sun, whose light/heat combo had been more of a yellowish colour... before the massive stone obscured it via its' own bulk.

Moreover, it was moving at an amazing speed – within mere seconds it would impact the planet, and then-

"Helen," Jenny whispered, "is this our end-?"

Helen burst into action: she grabbed Jenny around the legs and raced back into the grotto's depths.

Several moments afterwards the meteorite struck the planet, causing tsunamis and earthquakes all over the world. Needless to say, a certain little coastal grotto got obliterated completely – but it didn't matter, for by then it was already devoid of human life...

4.

The smell of spring flowers and fresh new leaves after the semi-sterile atmosphere of the late Cretaceous grotto is nothing short of overwhelming, Jenny thought as she lay on her back, feeling as if every ounce of strength had left her body and left her with the constitution of a jellyfish, staring helplessly at the clear blue sky with just a _hint_ of clouds at the edge of her vision.

From her right, Jenny heard some new sounds – Helen. "You all right?" the other woman said thickly, clearly not well herself after the mad dash through the time tunnel. "Say something, if you are."

"That was the big one, right?" Jenny said getting into a sitting position. "Got to admit, it was, it was-"

"Big?" Helen's voice was carefully controlled. "Can you, uh, take a look at your legs now?"

"What? Sure," Jenny glanced and froze. "Where are the bandages? They look-"

"Never mind how they look - can you walk?"

"Walk? Let me see-" Jenny tried to shift them and froze. "They- they barely move, they feel so weak – what happened?"

"They got hit with roughly 64 million and several thousand years of healing _at once_," Helen said flatly. "You're lucky that they haven't atrophied at all – I'm sorry."

"Hah?"

"I'm sorry for this," Helen elaborated, "I intended to stay back there until they healed completely and _then_ take you home, but now, well... that's why I never trust the Cretaceous, you know?"

"...what are we going to do about my legs?"

"Oh, I'll take you to your home; you'll phone Lester, sort it over, get a trainer, and soon will be as good as you ever were."

"No."

"What?!"

"That sort of thinking put me into a mental state that was insufficient to outmanoeuvre a mushroom from the future, let alone a giant meat-eating dinosaur or anything else," Jenny shook her head, and then shifted to face the other woman. "Helen, look. You have sort-of cleaned the slate by saving my life _twice_, so why not start anew?"

"If you think that I can help you walk and be your sitter-"

"I _mean_, I would rather deal with you than Lester," Jenny exclaimed. "Helen, come _on_, there must be something I can do that interests you or something?"

Silence fell, as Helen carefully observed Jenny's still-sitting form. "Hmm... tell me, as a PR agent, do you know any publishing houses or something like that?"

"Maybe," Jenny admitted carefully. "Why? Do you need something published?"

"Yes," Helen said calmly, "something that, perhaps if played right, can help your Center as well – financially: Leek's depredations had hit you hard there too."

"How do you- never mind," Jenny said slowly.

"So, do we have a deal?" Helen hunkered down next to Jenny and stretched out her hand.

For her part, Jenny gave the other woman a look. Probably for the first time ever since their initial meeting, Helen looked somewhat unsure of her surroundings, probably of Jenny's reaction – but why shouldn't she? Everything that Jenny had ever done, has been initially dictated by others – her parents, her fiancé, James and Nick, even Danny was beginning to, when she quit, in part due to the pain of losing Nick, but in other part of self-mortification and certain self-realizations that just didn't sit well with her even back then...

"Deal," she said and shook Helen's hand. "Let's show them!"


	4. Helen brings home Connor

**Helen brings home Connor**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures._

1. (Several weeks later)

The evening was typical of an English October-night – dark, damp, not quite rainy, not quite foggy, but definitely cold, cold enough for Jenny Lewis to wince as her still not-quite-recovered muscles twitched and ached slightly due to the above reasons.

It has been several weeks – probably a month or two – since Helen had brought her back from that ill-fated quest into the prehistoric past, and since then, things continued to proceed in new and unusual directions.

Take her own life, for the main example. The original Jenny Lewis would've never gone through a time anomaly in the forest of Dean or anyplace else, would have never experienced certain death twice or lose some muscle mass in her legs... and yet she would not have given up that experience either, and not just because of the sea reptile's tooth that she used as a conversation piece when her parents had come to visit.

And then there was Helen Cutter. The anthropologist turned time traveller turned impromptu assassin turned madwoman was now turning into someone else, namely a professional artist – and Jenny Lewis was right in the middle of it. Somehow, during all of those years of loneliness, Helen Cutter had picked a hobby – an earlier one than the whole kill Nick and destroy humanity thing – and it was drawing. Scenery, prehistoric and futuristic animals, people – Helen could draw them all, and then some: Jenny's mother, in particular, had been caught rather flat-footed when Helen took-on her challenge and had drawn the Lewis family... as a family of centaurs, of all things. Rather non-canonical centaurs too, and Mrs. Lewis had not been amused... but Jenny's father was, and that settled things nicely, as Jenny, being now something of Helen's PR agent, was allowed to keep her hard-won independence from her family...

There was a knock on the door, and Jenny frowned – one of her new idiosyncrasies had been giving Helen a spare key, so the older woman had never knocked-

"Jenny, open up!" Helen's voice followed the knock. "I've run into a familiar face in a bar and brought him here!"

Him? Jenny couldn't exactly imagine who the man in question was: Sarah and Becker had rescued Danny, Connor and Abby but there were some complications, she had heard from Lorraine, Lester's secretary that Danny had ended up in modern-day Corsica of all places and Lester thus was currently busy-

Suddenly, the door was opened rather violently, and a rather irritated Helen dragged a very drunk Connor Temple inside the flat, leaving Jenny feel rather flabbergasted...

2.

The morning light filtered through the windows half closed by the exotic-looking curtains onto a rather girly-looking bed. Connor Temple, who was certainly not girly, but who was lying in that bed all the same, grimaced and opened one bloodshot eye.

What had happened last night? He mutely wondered. Of course, he could remember yesterday to a point, which was that he would rather forget that wretched day completely, but instead he remembered clear enough, except for the twilight part of it – never mind the night. That was just a big black blot with some cobweb memories that vanished away like dew in sunlight whenever he tried to concentrate on any one of them.

Still, where he was, currently? This wasn't Lester's apartment, or Abby's- theirs- his- flat, or –

There were voices coming from outside the bedroom, Wincing and feeling as if every last bone in his body was hung-over, Connor carefully made his way.

3.

The rest of the house, or at least the parts that Connor could see, had that same look – not so much neat, as girly, feminine, or some similar adjective. That didn't console Connor any – he knew that the two qualities didn't always go together gender-wise, and-

The corridor suddenly opened into a clean and small dining room, where a pair of women were sitting at a table – at least, Connor assumed that they were women, for the bright sunlight in this room was a bit too much for his eyes for the moment and all that he could truly distinguish were their silhouettes; beyond that, they could be aliens from Jupiter for all that he could really see.

"Ah, Mr. Temple," one of the women/aliens thrust something glassy and cold into Connor's hands. "Drink this and return to human race at least temporarily, would you?"

Connor's conscious brain feels like oozing out of the ears in regards to making sense from the woman's voice. His subconscious, however, works just fine, and so he takes the glass of coldness and gulps it down.

The next moment, some icy cold fireworks burst in his skull, and he just ran into the bathroom, momentarily forgetting about his hosts.

"...that was cruel," was the last thing that he remembered for a while.

4.

Shortly afterwards, Connor re-emerged from the washroom, still looking a bit flushed and a bit self-disgusted, but otherwise fine; he emerged and walked back to the dining room, where another plate with sausages, black bread and ketchup, all looking rather appetizing to the hungry youth. The faces that were located on the other side of the table, however... they were another story.

"You!" Connor exclaimed at the sight of the two women who were the last people he expected to see together. "What are you doing here?" he turned to Helen.

"Well, since I brought you here last night I decided to stay around and ask you some questions... oh, right about now," Helen said airily, but the look on her face was much more serious.

"I don't have to answer anything to you-"

"Connor, last night you were badly drunk, and Abby didn't answer the phone when I called her. What's wrong?" Jenny said before Connor could finish his statement or Helen respond to it.

Now _that_ caused a reaction: Connor's defiant stance just crumbled and he almost shrunk onto himself. "Abby," he managed to half-gasp half-sob, "Abby is dying!"

"What?!" It took all of Jenny's self-control not to launch herself across the table. "What- how-"

"It all started, as luck would have it, when Sarah and Becker brought us back-"

"Wait – did they bring you straight from the Cretaceous, or did you take a more... roundabout route?" Helen interrupted.

"Actually... yeah, first me and Abby jumped through a time anomaly that we found, partly in desperation of searching for Danny, partly to avoid the possible encounter with the big rock from space that killed the dinosaurs – pretty stupid, hah?"

"...no," Helen shook her head as she and Jenny exchanged an enigmatic look between themselves (something that bothered Connor somehow, along the way), "it wasn't – you were just not so lucky and somewhat ignorant: back then, the time _was_ late Cretaceous, but it was still 10 million years before the giant meteorite caused the K/T extinction, so you were in no danger from _that_, I made sure of it."

"...oh, okay, anyways, after we landed in the Jurassic, and saw the sauropods, the allosaurs, the ceratosaurs, and the stegosaurs... Sarah and Becker found us and brought us back at that point," a slight smile appeared momentarily on Connor's face before vanishing abruptly. "At any rate, though, the problems began when we came back: first Abby had a sudden attack of diarrhoea, but after that she seemed okay for a while – a really _short_ while, but still – and then she began to deteriorate, there's no other word, and the doctors are seriously confused-"

"So, let me see," Helen said quietly. "First you go back in time and _then_ forwards, right?"

"Yeah, but-" Connor fell silently, as Helen brusquely got up from her seat.

"Jenny," she spoke to the other woman, "have Connor take you to the hospital where they keep Abby, unless it's in the ARC's medical wing-"

"It's not – I mean, she's not there," Connor responded, "the ARC wasn't equipped to handle such sicknesses, so Abby was moved to a local hospital, you know, the one in our neighbourhood, because at first we thought that it was nothing, just a bug, but then it became too late for her to be moved, and- why are you looking at me like that?"

"I think I have a technology that can heal your girlfriend – Abby, was it?" Helen said, as she began to move towards the door. "However, I thought that you want to be around as well, 'cause clearly the two of you have _something_ good, if I ever understood couples-"

"You can do that? With technology? That doesn't make sense- and besides, it's _you_. You killed Nick – why do you care about Abby?"

"I don't – I just think that it'll be better for my plans if she lives rather than dies," Helen's voice was both emotionless and sharp, like a finely made blade. "Therefore, I will try to heal her, whether you believe me or not." Without any further comments, she pulled out a small, bluish, rectangular device from her pocket – the time anomaly manifestation device. Several quick button punches – and she vanished into a time anomaly.

Connor looked at Jenny, who breathed in hard and got onto her feet. "Come on," she said, her cheeks a bit flushed with effort. "Lead me to the car, please?"

Connor blinked. Was it just his imagination or had Jenny gain some weight?

4.

"You're late," Helen said coolly as they met her at the front doorway to the hospital, "and Connor's got mismatched ears. What did he do this time?"

"All I did was comment about Jenny's-" Connor winced as the aforementioned Jenny whirled towards him, obviously pissed.

"Don't mind him," Helen's voice froze the two of them on the spot. "When I met Nick at around that age he was no more tactful than his, uh, what the term I am looking for?"

"I believe you called him a sycophant," Jenny muttered, as Helen helped walk up the stairs and through the doors. "And yeah, I am aware that I am still a bit out of shape – do the two of you have to rub it in?"

"I haven't said anything," Helen muttered.

"Yeah! And you didn't even answer me!" Connor piped up as he gave Helen a critical look. "Say, where is your miracle cure or whatever? Is it in your pockets or wherever?"

"Yes. It is very compact," Helen said.

"So, where did you get it?"

"The right question would _when_ did I get it, and I got it in the twenty-fifth or maybe twenty-sixth century _AD_."

"Oh, you mean where the future predators and the fungus-"

"No. They came onto the scene roughly 5 thousand years after today, that's four-and-a-half millennia of difference. Haven't Nick taught you any basic paleontological techniques? Just whom do you plan on being when you grow up? Nick... he had his flaws, but palaeontology and dinosaurs had been his dream, and I thought that they were yours, too."

The word 'sycophant' or anything similar was never said aloud, but they hung in the air unsaid all the same, and Helen's gaze had such a potent mix of disgust and disappointment in it, that Connor turned first red, then white, and then fell completely silent as he led the other two to Abby's room.

5.

When Jenny had last seen Abby Maitland several months ago, the young woman was a vibrant and spunky character with blonde hair. Now, the woman who was lying in a hospital bed appeared to be a complete opposite to that character – and in a bad way.

"What- what has happened to her?" Jenny gasped, as she looked at the wizened, _greyed_ shell of a woman lying before her, with several UVs going into her arms and fresh operation scars showing starkly on her abdomen and torso.

"A mixture of ptomaine poisoning and bacteraemia," Helen's voice was suddenly very quiet, "made worse by roughly 150 million years of time travel."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I... I have seen similar symptoms in some of my clones, and some of my personal chronological clones had experienced it," Helen shook her head, still quite quiet. "Now, I hope that this will work on her...and if it doesn't... I accept full responsibility."

With these words, Helen pulled out a small sack from her pocket. She unwrapped it – and it proved to be considerably bigger than before – and pulled out several contraptions, mainly consisting of tubes and wires that culminated in rather robotic-looking "gloves" at two of its' ends, and a battery pack of some sorts in the middle.

"Um, what are you doing?" Connor managed to ask Helen, as the latter just slipped on the contraction, as if it was a sweater.

"Revving it up," the latter replied curtly, as she attached an eye-piece on top of the rest. "Now shush, I am looking!" And the latter was said so masterfully, that Connor and Jenny actually drew back a bit and grew silent, as Helen cast a critical eye over Abby's prone form, lit the tips of her metallic 'gloves' with a chromatically white glow – and then jabbed them into Abby's stomach!

6.

For several minutes the hospital chamber was flooded with chromatically white light, crackling sound and a steady smell of ozone – as if a ball lightning has manifested in the hospital room... or maybe there was no 'as if', while Helen's administrations of Abby's conditions went, and moments passed, each as long as a heartbeat. And then – it was over.

"You!" Connor exclaimed in righteous rage, momentarily forgetting his chastisement at Helen's hands, "you! What you-"

He froze, staring at Abby, who was staring back at him, actually looking around the room in a state of general confusion. "Connor, what is going on? Am I still- Why is Helen- Never mind!" she suddenly grimaced and raced off into the built-in bathroom.

"Well, it's so good being right," Helen exhaled sharply as she half-turned around to Jenny, wiping, flakes of rush off her sleeves and into the current waste bin. "Now let's leave and let the young couple settle things on their own, okay?"

Jenny nodded mutely, staring with something suspiciously resembling awe in her eyes. "Um, where are-" she began, indicating the apparatus that Helen had used on Abby and which now was gone.

"Deteriorated completely in the process," Helen gave a part-sheepish and part-awkward date. "I admit that it wasn't in the best of conditions when I have grabbed it-" she paused. "Anyways, Jenny, I think you and I should leave-"

"Yes, yes, and have them make up, or make out, or whatever," Jenny laughed. "Anyways, Connor-"

"Excuse me," the door opened and yet another woman walked into the room. "I thought that I've heard a name of Connor mentioned here – oh, you _are_ here. Hello again."

"Caroline," Connor spoke slowly. "Hello, what are you doing?"

For a few second the four people just stood there, staring at each other, and then Caroline's face hardened, as if she was plunging into some unknown waters.

"Connor," she said firmly. "I'm pregnant."


	5. Connor

**Connor**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures._

1.

Connor's heart is beating wildly in his chest. "You're pregnant? How did this happen?"

"Yeah, and I would like to know that as well!" Abby, having been just a bathroom door's thickness away, heard the exchange perfectly and naturally was beyond mere anger – she was past furious and rapidly approaching enraged. "Connor, why is _she_ looking for _you_?"

"Because it's _his_ child," Caroline half-turned and met Abby's stare with her own and the air practically shuddered from that collision. "Nice to see that you're not dying like Connor had claimed."

"Yeah, about that," Abby's gaze had softened somewhat, "why is that? Not that I am upset about _that_, of course, but-"

"But I am in the city and have decided that it would be better for me if you lived," Helen said calmly as she had silently walked over to Jenny's spot in the room. "And now I am guessing that it would be better for everyone if it was just the three of you here, right?"

Even as Helen was saying these words, she was dragging Jenny out of the room, so all that Abby had to do was nod in agreement and turn her attention back to Connor and Caroline. "Well?" she said curtly. "What has happened?"

"You were dying, Abby, really dying," Connor slowly said, visibly shuddering, as he remembered the hellish nights and days. "I didn't know whom to turn to-"

"And so you turned to her. You couldn't have turned to Jenny-"

"Jenny had lost Nick. I doubt that she would have been much of an advisor," Connor shook his head. "Abby, look – you were dying, the doctors said that you will die within the week from blood poisoning and organ rejection, and there wasn't anything they or anyone else could! Lester is in France, getting Danny from Corsica, Sarah and Becker flatly told me to go on my vacation leave or whatever, and Jenny, well..." Connor fell silent.

Abby paused herself, wondering if she should point out that Jenny has apparently shacked up with Helen Cutter, but decided against it: apparently – here Connor was adamant – Helen had saved her life, and Abby wasn't about to look that sort of a gift horse in the mouth.

"Anyways," Abby slid back away from the slippery issue of Jenny Lewis and Helen Cutter, "you called her? And she _listened_?"

"Yes, yes I did, like all always have on our dates," Caroline answered suddenly, before Connor could. "I'm guessing that you usually don't do that?"

Now the temperature in the room was practically frigid. "I _beg_ your pardon, what did you say?" Abby growled (Connor practically felt his manhood with away).

Caroline didn't respond verbally – rather, she just stared down at the other woman with a rather unimpressive look. Connor, unfortunately, decided to speak up and thus pretty much managed to make a mistake. "Abby, look," he said quickly, "on our old dates I used to do most of the talking and what-not, and I guess when I have called Caroline that night, we sort-of fell into that old routine-"

"And into the bed."

"Abby, it was _my_ bed! We _do_ sleep in separate beds!" Connor all but howled, confused and more than a bit angry at himself.

"You're right," Abby snapped. "We do sleep separately... Connor, I don't want to see you until the end of the week – at the very least, you understand?"

"Yes Abby," Connor said, quiet once again.

He and Caroline just left.

2.

Yet once in the hospital's hall, the two of them had a confrontation of their own.

"Connor-" Caroline began, but the young man shushed her.

"Caroline, the child is mine, isn't it?"

Caroline's cheeks turned a darker brown than what they were before. "Yes," she said, "it is – you _know_..." she paused. "Anyways, we can set up a doctor's appointment, and have an expertise and all those other things... and when we prove that the child is yours, what then?"

Connor paused, thinking quietly. As if on purpose, Helen's words about Nick Cutter and his dreams came into his mind, her look – for all the anger that he still felt towards her, that facial expression had hurt him much more than he had expected... maybe it was time to be more like his role model in more than just time-anomaly-related things.

"I'm not sure how to explain this," he said slowly. "Abby... she meant a lot to me, and probably always will, no matter what – do understand this... But if this child is mine, then we will raise him, together, somehow, no matter what."

"We will?" Caroline said quietly.

"Yeah," Connor nodded, and added, largely to himself, "and I think I should be getting back into my studies as well, yeah..."

As the two young adults just stared quietly at one another, Connor's cell phone began to ring. It was Lester's secretary, Lorraine, who was essentially running the ARC during Lester's absence in England – a time anomaly has opened up in a scrap yard, and it had to be dealt with as soon as possible.

4.

The time anomaly just sort of levitated there, its' chromatically white glow augmenting the light of the sun. The fact that a salty smell of the sea was wafting through it as well, adding a further element to the overall idea of a tropical paradise lying on the other side of it as well.

"Caroline? Thanks for giving me the lift – I guess that once the others arrive we'll be able to take it down from here," Connor told the mother of his (potentially) child. "I guess that you can go now."

"Oh no I won't – I certainly want to, but I won't," Caroline shook her head. "If you're going to put with me, I clearly have to work for it as well."

Connor blinked. "Even I know that the grammar in this sentence is atrocious, but thank you for the sentiment-"

"Connor?" Jenny's voice started the younger pair, "me and Helen have got your message – oh, this is the time anomaly, hah?"

"Yes, yes it is," Connor responded, sounding somewhat cross. "Now unless Mrs. Cutter-"

"It's doctor, doctor Cutter," Helen sounded quite cool and collected. "Try to remember it, _Mr._ Temple."

"Um, people? I think I can see some movement on the other side of it – and it's big," Caroline didn't sound very self-assured.

"How big?" Everybody immediately shifted their attention towards the time anomaly, only to see a huge bird's head poke out through it, armed with a wickedly hooked beak. Connor realized it in an instant:

"A terror bird! Everybody – back away!"

The terror bird immediately fastened its' attention onto _him_ and stepped through the time anomaly completely. It _was_ huge, easily two or three meters tall, armed with a wickedly hooked beak and sharp claws on its feet _and_ wings.

"Oh my, it looks almost like a raptor from the Jurassic Park™ movies!" Caroline exclaimed. "Or a carnivorous ostrich."

"A carnivorous crane, actually – bird, not human invention," Connor couldn't help commenting. "I and the others had once confronted a whole flock of them – Danny eventually lured them back using a sound recording... but I don't think that that will work here. Helen – any practical advice?"

"None," the latter replied carefully observing how a _second_ terror bird seemed ready to join the first. "And incidentally, what's the ARC's current policy on dealing with these situations?"

"Um, we don't tend to kill prehistoric beasts unless it's absolutely unavoidable – you remember the brontothere situation – and besides, the Special Forces will – or rather _won't_ - be here quickly enough to use violence, unless you have any-"

A loud honk from Caroline's car startled everyone, including the prehistoric predators, which stopped advancing and instead began hissing like geese, lashing out with their oddly-shaped wings at the car.

"Good idea!" Helen quickly caused Jenny's vehicle to honk as well, startling the terror birds even further. "Caroline, while Jenny and I try to distract them, get yourself and Connor into the car and slowly advance upon them – maybe they'll take the cars for toxodon or glyptodonts and back away."

"Good idea," Connor exclaimed, "and if it doesn't work it's always better-"

The terror birds charged incredibly fast, striking like snakes with their long necks and huge beaks. Unlike the terror birds previously encountered by Connor, these two seemed to be slimmer and quicker, using speed rather than strength to overpower their prey... besides the huge beaks and talons, of course.

Instinctively Connor screamed as the bird on the right swung its' beak right at his head only to whirl away at the last moment as Jenny's car almost smashed into its' legs instead. The bird – and its' mate – jumped away and Connor quickly climbed into the car.

The terror birds struck again, this time simultaneously at the windshield of Caroline's machine, even as the latter was driving away from them, cracking the glass with ease. Caroline practically shrieked as she saw her windshield break apart and the terror birds begin their joint charge, when Helen lashed out through the window of Jenny's car, striking the terror bird on the right with her taser at its' neck. Promptly, the bird collapsed and the other one lashed out with its' beak... only to have Helen dodge and slam its' taser into its' head, dropping it down as well.

Then there was only silence, until Connor finally broke it. "That was fast," he admitted.

"No, it wasn't. Compared to the meat-eating dinosaurs that I had to outrun, they were slow, and not just because they're starving and exhausted."

"Say what?"

"These birds are starving and exhausting. The sabre-tooth cats are pushing them out of their usual territory," Helen explained slowly. "That's why they attacked the cars – they were desperate."

The time anomaly chose this moment to wink out. "Oh bugger," Helen muttered, as she pulled out the manifestation device. "I will need to re-charge it soon enough."

"Actually," Connor said slowly, "I have a better idea."

"One that can get you into better graces with Abby?"

"Yes," Connor nodded, half blushing and half glowering. Fortunately, no one, not even Helen Cutter decided to challenge him on that...

5.

The look on Lorraine's face, when the latter saw the two terror birds trussed up and ready to be studied behavouristically at the ARC was rather flabbergasted; as soon as she saw Jenny and Helen enter in the wake of Connor, the secretary quickly grew professional again. "Oh, Ms. Lewis, hello there. I'm sorry, but Mr. Lester still isn't back – something about an invasion of bulldog-sized sabre-toothed weasels-"

"That's perfectly understandable, Lorraine," Jenny said with a professional look of her own. "The animals from the future are even nastier than the ones from the past; still, weasels are weasels and I'm sure that James will get the best of them – eventually. Anyways, this time I came here because of the terror birds and what-not, so, uh, I'm not here on business – _this time_."

"Thanks for understanding, Ms. Lewis," Lorraine nodded gratefully and scurried away to accommodate the terror birds.

Jenny, meanwhile, turned to Connor. "Well, thanks for the exciting afternoon, Connor, but Helen and I should probably go now, right?"

"Not exactly," Connor shook his head. "We really need to talk." He turned to Helen. "I am truly grateful what you did to Abby and what you said to me has a good point, but we still need to talk." He paused and turned back to Jenny. "Um, do you remember where the office that dealt with public damages was?"

"You mean _my_ office?" Jenny said, lifting an eyebrow. "Who had taken over for the PR after I left?"

"I'm not sure," Connor admitted, looking rather guiltily, "after you left, the late Christine Johnson began to encroach onto our Center in person, so I'm not sure that we hired anyone new," he winced.

"I see," Jenny's voice sounded quite cool and even. "Then I guess we'll just go up to it, all the same, to check the condition. Ms.-" she turned to Caroline.

"Steele," the latter helpfully explained.

"Right, Ms. Steele, we will sort out the situation with your car."

"Good to hear it," Helen said calmly, "and I, I suppose, will wait in the cafeteria in the meanwhile-"

"Helen," Jenny said slowly. "You're coming with us – _please_ don't push it."

For a few moments the two women just stared at each other, and then Helen nodded in accord:

"Oh, very well, you're the one with the people skills."

Connor, for his part, just released a breath that he was subconsciously holding.

7.

The office was musty and dry, clearly not overly used in recent times, but still kept in workable conditions by the ARC's stuff.

"Lovely," Jenny sounded clearly disdainful and unimpressed. "Lorraine has done all that she could, I see." She marched over to one of the drawers, opened it, and withdrew a form. "Right. Ms. Steele, you write-up your report, and I'll get it across."

"How? Lester's absent-"

"But Lorraine isn't, and since she's the acting head of the ARC in Lester's absence, we can get this done before today – hopefully," Jenny shrugged casually. "You can use one of the tables in here to fill it."

"Thanks," Caroline nodded gratefully, and walked a bit off to the side, beginning to write down the details on the form already.

Connor, meanwhile, turned back to Jenny – and Helen, who was standing a bit off to the left, watching him curiously. "Right, now, please explain to me how the two of you came to be."

"I decided to be spontaneous, not unlike how Nick and Danny were," Jenny shrugged, "and here's the intermediate reason."

"Neither Nick nor Danny would want that-"

"I know, and this isn't exactly what I had in mind either, when I had my spontaneous idea, but if I hadn't... Abby would be probably mostly dead by now, so some good is coming out of it already."

Connor's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps, but Abby got sick-"

"Technically, she had a parasitic infestation – initially," Helen interrupted.

"No, she hadn't. The ARC's medical staff-"

"Can I first explain?" Helen somehow looked down on Connor despite the fact that the young man wasn't that physically shorter than her. "By the time of late Cretaceous, there were fully developed mammals, as opposed to the small cynodonts of the Triassic. This means that a lot of parasites – ticks, worms and insects – had evolved to prey on them. Among them were certain small midges or flies that infested the mammals, ah-"

"Lower intestines?" Connor suggested helpfully.

"No. A much gender-specific opening."

"_What_? That's crazy, that's-"

"That's nature for you," Helen said slowly. "This family of insects got extinct roughly around 65 million years ago alongside their main mammalian hosts, but as I said before, we arrived in the Cretaceous several million years before that time."

"But Abby wasn't a Cretaceous mammal!"

"Abby is still a mammal, and that was good enough for the flies. However, then you went backwards through time, to the Jurassic, so they got disassembled and assimilated in the process."

"Say what?"

"Look. Let's suppose that today one of the glass shards created by the terror birds grazed your arm and cut it. Then you went 4 million years into the past, _before_ you got born, let alone cut your arm, and-"

Connor blinked. "Are you saying that going back in time before you get hurt sort of erases all of it?"

"Yes," Helen nodded and turned to Jenny. "While going forwards in time after you get hurt instead hits you with accelerated physical healing that drains your body's natural resources and leaves you weakened, plus there's a fact that bleeding and time travel can create some very nasty, potentially lethal side effects, so I don't advise you using them like some sort of a panacea."

Connor – and Jenny – stared at Helen in astonishment. "How-? How's that possible?" Connor said weakly.

"I don't exactly have a concrete answer, outside of the fact that we're dealing with time itself – the creatures that come through it are just a side effect, so to speak," Helen shrugged. "Frankly, the ARC has been very lucky under Lester's management that it never had to deal with anything worse than giant futuristic weasels and the like. Anyways, where were we?"

"I'm done," Caroline walked over and heard the last question. "What are you talking about?"

"The good doctor, was, uh, explaining some facts about time travel," Connor shrugged slowly, as Jenny carefully took Caroline aside and began to explain the next step in the ARC's insurance policy. "So, what happened next?" he turned back to Helen.

"Well, first you jumped roughly another 70 million years _backwards_ in time, before the parasitic specie has even evolved, let alone infested your girlfriend. Consequently, the eggs or larvae of her parasite got broken down into molecules and assimilated into her body. Then you jumped _forwards_ at least 150 million years – beyond the lifespan of those insects, beyond the lifespan of that whole species, so naturally, when you came here, Abby's body had expelled the now-dead parasites in that fit that you naturally mistook for diarrhoea... but unfortunately this meant that some alkaloids still managed to enter her blood stream, causing that condition of hers," Helen paused. "I don't know anatomy, even human anatomy, all that well, but I do know that alkaloids shouldn't be in the blood stream, as your girlfriend has shown."

"Her name is Abby," Connor sighed. "But she's healed now, yes?"

"Yes," Helen nodded. "But where do you go from there?"

At that moment, though, Lorraine came into the room, phoned to it by Jenny regarding Caroline's windshield, and Connor opted to not respond, for if he had chosen to do so otherwise, he would have had nothing to say...

8. Several hours later

It was late evening, but Connor was only now returning to theirs – or only Abby's – flat. Surprisingly, the lights were on, which meant that Abby was already home... or their flat was being robbed. Unsurprisingly, Connor briefly mused about turning around and leaving the scene, whether of a crime or not, but then he decided to follow his deceased idol in more ways than just one and went in.

It was Abby. She was released from the hospital, and the look on her face was pretty much identical to the one worn by Connor. "You're late," she said flatly.

"You're early – I thought that I had till the end of the week."

"Oh! Can't wait to move out, can you?"

"No! Abby, you, I-" Connor floundered for words, for the right words to describe the situation, "we-"

"Connor, why did it have to be _her_? Couldn't you just have gotten a hooker off the streets if you were so desperate?"

"I didn't want sex, I just wanted a friend."

"Don't you have any other friends? You know, people who hadn't worked for that weasel, Leek?"

"Yes, and I love them dearly, but while you were dying I really didn't want to listen to the philosophy behind Harry Potter™ series or the pros and cons of the latest as opposed to the previous DnD™ edition. I just wanted somebody to listen, and Caroline, well, she proved to be a good listener."

Abby was silent, but then she inhaled and spoke again. "If she's keeping the baby and the baby is yours, then she is probably in love with you, because, honestly, I cannot think of any mercantile reasons, and the prehistoric animals gave her the creeps."

"I know."

"Connor, do you love her?"

"Nowhere as much as I love you – and what about you?"

Now it was Abby's turn to be quiet, and then she spoke. "I had the biggest crush on Stephen for the longest time, but he, he never gave me time of the day, he was in love with either Nick, or Helen, or maybe both of them somehow – we'll never know, I wasn't even the runner-up," she chuckled bitterly. "I was never unpopular in school or even in the zoo, but being passed-on in favour of an older woman or a man was a shock. I even learned all of those martial arts for his sake – and then he died."

"Abby, I am not Stephen, I-"

"I know, and you're great in your own way – you got Rex back, you dealt with the raptors and the other dinosaurs, you have tried to rescue me from the sea monsters from the future," Abby exhaled. "I know all that, yeah, and that's why I can't get between you and Caroline, I guess, not without coming out as a total and frigid bitch."

"Abby, look-"

"No, Connor, _you_ listen: you have a lot on the plate, and so do I, and frankly I think that we should give each other a bit more room to manoeuvre around each other and Caroline and _then_ we'll see-"

Wordlessly, Connor nodded in agreement, but then he remembered something:

"Is it a bad time to tell you that we brought two terror birds this afternoon? I thought that you would like have new animals to work with when you get out of the hospital."

Abby groaned, but a small smile appeared momentarily on her lips all the same.

"Connor, good night – we'll talk more in the days to come."


	6. Abby

**Abby**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures._

1.

'Sometimes,' Abby mused as she went to bed after talking to Connor with the unexpected twist in the end, 'being a mature person just wasn't worth it – like tonight. I went home fully expecting to succeed in shaming Connor into, well, something, and instead, well it got turned around completely onto me.'

At this point in time, Abby Maitland's mood was almost as black as the night outside their house, which was currently actually grey and grizzled from fog and cold, drizzling rain that was falling down even so late in the fall. While normally Abby loved falling asleep when it rained outside the house – the sound of raindrops falling put her into a rhythm that helped her fall asleep even quicker than usual – now currently even that sound didn't help her any: instead, she concentrated on other sounds: bed springs creaking under Connor's tossing and turning body, Rex chirping in a curious way from the kitchen, the creaks and squawks of Sid and Nancy echoed by two or three more high-pitched but similar squeaks-

Abby frowned. That didn't sound, or come out in her head, quite right. She listened in, and sure enough, there were just a bit too many diictodon sounds coming out of their kitchen, just a bit too much noise for just Sid and Nancy to make – and consequently, Abby decided to investigate, quietly approaching the kitchen armed with a flashlight.

And yet, this still meant that she was rather unprepared to see not only Rex, chirping cheerfully from the top of the fridge, as well as Sid and Nancy snorting at the foot of the same household utensil, but also three smaller diictodon huddled between the two adults, looking slightly more nervous than the latter. They were also slightly chubbier and cuter than their parents, yet upon seeing them, Abby felt faint all the same, and began to frenetically wonder if Helen was spending her nights in Jenny's living room, and if not, would Jenny mind if Abby would call her so late at night and ask for Helen-

"Oh, I see that you're awake too," Connor, looking considerably less shocked or confused than Abby entered their kitchenette as well. "And the old gang is here as well."

Abby was still too shocked to respond to Connor in any way, but Rex chirped in confirmation and the diictodon family collectively turned their heads to Connor in an expectant way.

"Right then," Connor nodded, all play-business for once today. "Let's get started." He opened the fridge and pulled-out a large plastic bowl that held "Carrots for tubers, lettuce for the greens, some water sprinkled for moisture and white bread for carbohydrates, starches and fibre. Enjoy, you all!" He set the bowl on the floor, and immediately the diictodon tore into the vegetarian dish, their tusked beaks opening and snapping shut like well-oiled mini-guillotines.

Upon seeing the other reptiles begin to feast, Rex chirped once more, this time more impatiently. "Right, mate," nodded Connor, and threw a thawed shrimp into the air. Immediately, like a small green lightning, Rex flew off the fridge, grasped the shrimp in mid-air with his jaws and landed, still holding onto it, onto the top of the kitchen cabinets.

"Uh, Connor," Abby began, but was interrupted by the loud crunch of Rex snapping the still-armoured shrimp into two, before beginning to eat-out the softer inner meat from out of the now-broken shell. "You do this often?" Abby finished instead.

"Every night since they hatched," Connor responded, now more at ease than earlier that night when he and Abby were talking over their respective love lives. "I probably shouldn't have encouraged them, but Rex is still active during the day, mostly, and honestly, without you the nights were just so empty..." he drawled away, clearly remembering yesterday's events as well. "So, uh, why are you up?"

"Same as you – I just heard the commotion and came to investigate," Abby said a trifle weakly, as the assembled reptiles ignored them and just ate their late suppers instead. "So, uh, how and when did Sid and Nancy breed?"

"About the same time when your brother left and I left Lester's flat," Connor said. "They made a nest of sorts in the basement and Nancy was hatching them in there, and Sid was raiding our garden, 'cause we were still stuck in the past at that time. When I came back and Rex showed me what was going on, I sort of began to supply them with domestic greenery instead, before our neighbours caught a whiff that something was going on."

"But still, why carrots? Why not tomatoes or cucumbers?"

Connor sighed. "Abby, they come from late Permian. Back then, there were no fruits or flowers and very few trees. The diictodon were herbivores, but they ate mainly tubers and low-lying shrub foliage, hence the carrots and lettuce. I also added some white bread for carbohydrates and fibre and the like for a well-rounded diet."

"And water?"

"They're desert animals, Abby, they – and their pups – need water only every two weeks or so, so it's no big deal," Connor shrugged.

"And Rex?"

"Rex? Rex was kind of jealous of their midnight lunches and he was beginning to eye the youngsters in a funny way, and that caused Sid and Nancy to begin to give him the evil eye, so I threw him a defrosted shrimp to keep him happy."

"Why a shrimp?"

"'Cause _Rex_ didn't eat any tubers or leaves," Connor said seriously. "He, however, ate insects and spiders, and to him a shrimp is like a big juicy beetle or something." Connor paused, and then added: "Abby, he is a reptile, he's got a different metabolism from a warm-blooded creature – a big snack like that keeps him full until daybreak or so."

"Does Caroline know?"

"Probably," Connor looked away. "Let's not go there, please, not now."

"And Lester? Have you told him?"

"No, actually, when I found out, he and others have already left for France, and the reports from Sarah show that the situation was already tense and complicated before the giant weasels invaded, so – no..."

"Right," Abby exhaled heavily, "that's good to know. Will we tell Jenny and Helen?"

"We'll, uh, um, I don't know?"

"Right, fair enough, well, I'm back to bed," Abby said crossly, re-opened the door of their kitchenette...

...and almost walked into a time anomaly that was levitating in the corridor.

"Oh, crap!"

2.

"Helen? Jenny? Anyone?"

"Miss Maitland, good morning to you too. Do you know that it's three o'clock in morning?"

"There's a time anomaly in our corridor, and I, Connor, our pets – we're sort of trapped in our kitchen."

"Right." Helen's voice turned business-like, and then more distant, as she apparently turned away from the phone receiver at her end and shouted, very loudly:

"Jenny! Wake-up! It's an ARC-related emergency!!"

"Wha-? What is it?" Jenny's sleepier voice came joined in on the conversation. "Abby, Connor, is that you?"

Carefully, yet quickly enough, Abby repeated their domestic situation regarding the time anomaly.

"Abby," Jenny's voice turned business-like as well. "Grab your pets if you can and get out of there through the window or something. If another starving giant bird or prehistoric tiger or some other big carnivore gets through there, you all will be sitting ducks, do you hear me?"

"Yes, Jenny, we're on it," Abby said quickly, "thanks. Connor-" she put down the phone receiver only to see Connor moving in the direction of the time anomaly. "What're you doing now?"

"Abby, come on," Connor said quietly. "I just want one good look at some sort of a prehistoric or a future world – please?" He made a pouting, puppy-eyed face at her.

For her part, Abby exhaled through her teeth: Jenny made some very good sense when she told them to get out of the kitchenette and their house in general – if there were any future predators, or raptors, or simply wild leopards or bears waiting or lurking on the other side of the time anomaly, then them venturing through the time anomaly unprepared would probably spell their end. And yet, unexpectedly, Abby felt something rebellious rise deep in her gut, suggesting that if she backed down now, she would never be able to look Connor in the eye again, or her own expression, or comment on Jenny's weight and lack of adventure spirit, so she said:

"Fine, Connor, but it'll be just a peak, and if I don't like what's there, we're going back and leaving the house, okay?"

"Aye-aye, captain Abby!" Connor said cheerfully. "Therefore, let's go now!"

And so they went.

3.

To say that the view of what greeted Abby and Connor when they emerged through the time anomaly was unexpected would be incorrect: Abby, at least, _did_ expect to meet some sort of dinosaurs on the other end. However, even she did not expect to see a semi-tropical sea shore, almost hedged-upon by rather exotic-looking plants.

"What are they?" Abby whispered in something approaching genuine awe as she and Connor just stood there, quietly, with the time anomaly at their backs.

"Iguanodons, or rather iguanodonts of some sort – ornithopod dinosaurs of some kind in other words," Connor said helpfully, albeit misinterpreting Abby's question somewhat... but not by far: the striped, powerfully-built herbivores up to 10 meters in length in some cases had caught her attention as well.

"I, I meant the smaller, shorter, armoured ones," she argued weakly. "I'm guessing they're from a different family?"

"Yeah, they're some sort of thyreoporan specie – polacanthus, or Gastonia, or something like that," Connor nodded, observing the living tanks that grazed alongside the taller iguanodons. "I'm not sure if they're nodosaurids or ankylosaurids without examining them closer, especially their tails-" he trailed away, as one of the younger iguanodons, having eating its' fill for now, trotted away from the tree line to water's edge to stretch its' muscles and to bask in the sun – and that was all that an aquatic predator had needed.

Without any warning, a huge drab-coloured shape easily more than twice as big as the dinosaur burst from the sea, grabbed the animal's right foreleg in its' jaws and began to pull it backwards into the water seemingly without any effort on its' part. The dinosaur bleated either from pain or panic or both, and began... to desperately jab the spike on its' forelimb into the sea hunter's jaws, as its relatives fled inland, away from the monster.

Once, twice, thrice it stabbed the marine monster, and then the sea reptile had reached the deeper waters and began to flex itself around, effectively lifting the young dinosaur off the ground and flinging into the shallows of the shore. The impact stunned the dinosaur long enough for the other animal to release its' grip on the foreleg and bite through the ribcage instead: one bite, and the young iguanodon's body slacked, allowing its' killer to drag it off into the ocean's depths with ease.

Slowly – she has been standing closer to the water's edge than Connor – Abby turned to her friend. "We're leaving now-" she began, and then several things happened at the same time.

First, a really loud, practically thundering roar came from the prehistoric jungle, causing Abby and Connor to momentarily freeze in their tracks – just as the time anomaly winked and vanished, leaving them stranded. Then, several of the plant-eating dinosaurs – more of the same iguanodon variety – burst back from the jungle and flee up the sandy shore instead, keeping an eye on the marine hunters as well. And finally, the land hunters made their appearances, and these were the true meat-eating dinosaurs, as big as the biggest of the local iguanodons, but completely different.

Initially though, Abby was still in shock from the time anomaly's disappearance and the brief iguanodon stampede, so what struck her first, were the legs, built very much like a ground-dwelling bird – a black grouse, perhaps, or a snow ptarmigan. Unlike a ptarmigan's legs, however, the feet of the meat-eating dinosaur were armed with powerfully-looking talons, and were, much, much taller and thicker.

Silently, the gazes of the still-prone Abby and Connor travelled upwards, to the torso, which was covered, just like the legs and feet, in dark and opaque black-coloured skin with some russet-coloured vertical bars on the sides and back, which possessed a proportionally short ridge of skin and bone as well. Yet there was nothing _short_ in regards to the dinosaur's swishing tail, or the fore limbs that ended in three wickedly hooked claws each, or the head and jaws, which appeared big and muscular and toothy enough to bite-off an iguanodon's head and neck with one bite.

Finally, as an extra detail to an already-finished masterpiece of hunting prowess, the initial meat-eater was accompanied by its' mate, a slightly smaller dinosaur whose colouration was brighter and less opaque than the first one's; in short, it appeared that Abby and Connor were doomed.

The older and bigger dinosaur moved forwards out of the tree colour, its' yellowish eyes scouring the scenery around it, its' nostrils flaring as it smelled out anything edible – and Abby and Connor were definitely in that category.

Slowly, ponderously, unflinchingly, the meat-eater's great head shifted in their direction: it was the end, as far as Abby and Connor were concerned, for the two dinosaurs had cut them off the relative safety of the tree cover, and the sea monsters in the water made the idea of swimming to safety impossible.

"Abby, I-" Connor half-turned to Abby even as she did the same thing in his direction with an unreadable look that could be either a matching proclamation of love or a start of the biggest dressing-down that had ever heard. "I-"

"Ah, there you two are!" Helen's voice brought Connor's admittance of whatever short. "Let's go – oh."

The meat-eating dinosaurs were beginning to pick up speed, seeing how their prey seemed to be escaping. Now they looked as quick and relentless as a pair of runaway freight trains – only shorter and deadlier. Helen thought, upon seeing this, just grabbed Connor and Abby by the napes of their pyjamas and pulled them backwards through the time anomaly, just as the dinosaurs had reached them – and then-

4.

"What were you two thinking? I told you not to go there – and you went there!" Jenny's dark-eye glare wasn't as intimidating as the yellowish gaze of the carnivorous dinosaurs, but certainly not for the lack of trying. "Abby – did you have a blonde moment? Connor – on the other hand, I really don't want to know!"

"And on that note, let's consider the first wave of criticism at an end," Helen said bemusedly, "and for my part, I'll note that you could've tried to take some sort of supplies with you, if you were going to explore."

"We were just going to have a look and go right back, but the dinosaurs...they were simply amazing," Connor responded quietly.

"And now you have a chance to remember them always," Helen shrugged. "Being an anthropologist, these reptiles aren't particularly attractive to me, but it's your call."

"No, it's not!" Jenny snapped crossly. "Have you forgotten who's in charge of the ARC to begin with?"

"Uh, James Lester?"

"No, well, yes, well," Jenny foundered and looked at Helen for support; unfortunately, the other woman didn't appear to be particularly supporting at the moment and just gazed bemusedly at the younger adults.

"Look, you two," she said after a brief, though somewhat uncomfortable, pause. "Why don't you get dressed and go with us to the ARC already? There, Connor can get whatever the equipment he has to come back and investigate the time anomaly's site and Abby still has to overlook the two terror birds that we brought back yesterday to the center."

"Yeah, I still need to do that, I just forgot, what with all the dinosaurs and sea monsters," Abby sighed. "What were their names again?"

"Mosasaurs?" Jenny suggested in a gentler tone of voice.

"No – the shape was too wide, there was still a neck – it was a pliosaur of some sorts," Connor spoke up suddenly. "Abby – I'm sorry that I got you into-"

"Yeah, but now you're out," Helen said firmly, "so stop waxing romantic and get dressed already – you're not exactly that sort of a paragon of manliness to show-off to everyone with whom you're working, you know?"

Connor turned red and fled into his room to change. Abby belatedly realized that this applied to her as well and followed Connor's actions as well.

5.

The terror birds, Abby first thinks when she sees them, are very much birds, _not_ dinosaurs in feathers, even if they are probably twice her height, and have beaks that could bite-off her hand and arm up to the elbow in a single gulp and their wings are more like twisted, clawed forelimbs with actual claws on them... yeah, they weren't exactly dinosaurs, but they certainly tried.

And yet, Abby realized that they weren't dinosaurs, not precisely. True, the look in their eyes certainly was raptor-like, but that was the key to Abby's dissatisfaction with them, so to speak. Abby _had_ met raptors at least three times – once in a mall before Jenny had joined the center, once in Leek's hide-out when Stephen had died, and once in the Cretaceous itself, when they had come with Danny to stop Helen – and every time the raptors proved to be quick and tenacious opponents, vicious predators and everything else, but after the meat-eating giant of today, as well as the giganotosaurus in the airport, Abby was no longer sure that the raptors themselves were 'all that'.

"Who is all that?" Helen suddenly asked, as she had silently approached Abby from behind, startling the younger woman.

"Raptors," Abby quickly collected herself. "Sure, they were nasty animals, like wild dogs or jackals, only without their charm or anything like it," she grimaced. "One of them had even eaten its' own young, you know?"

"If it did it, then it probably wasn't its' own young," Helen shook her head. "Among the dinosaurs, raptors were some of the smarter ones, as smart as jackdaws or the Tower's ravens."

"The tower's-?"

"The Tower of London," Helen shrugged, grimacing slightly, as if she remembered something that she didn't like. "Anyways, these aren't dinosaurs, they're birds-"

"Birds are dinosaurs, so to speak," Abby rolled her eyes. "Didn't Nick tell you that?"

"Yes – but it's not your point, is it?"

"Right," Abby nodded, belatedly remembering that mentioned Nick to Helen wasn't the most tactful thing ever. "Anyways, I guess I was thinking that by looking at these two you can see their dinosaur ancestors – but a very specific dinosaur ancestor, you know? The bigger meat-eaters – they weren't much related to birds, were they?"

"No, they just had a common ancestor – a very distant common ancestor," Helen nodded.

"Hah?"

"Didn't your boyfriend explain? The ancestors of both birds and tyrannosaur dinosaurs were small, feathered meat-eating dinosaurs-"

"What we saw, it wasn't a T-Rex," Abby shook her head. "It had three fingers on each hand, each clawed like a really big hook, and it had a ridge along its' back – not a sail like that of the spinosaurus in the movie, but a much smaller ridge."

Helen blinked and stared at Abby with something suspiciously resembling respect. "Fascinating. You realize that you have just described a dinosaur that I have never seen?"

"I have? You haven't? But you-"

"-am an anthropologist, my dear, and have never liked dinosaurs to begin with," Helen shrugged. "Never hid the fact from Nick either."

"Right. Anyways," Abby took a deep breath, "what are you doing here?"

"I came with you, remember?"

"No, I mean what are you _doing here_?"

"Uh," Helen had the good graces to look slightly embarrassed, "Jenny asked me to come with her."

"Doesn't she trust you?"

"After I have spent most of her bathroom shampoo and what-not on a good hard soak - apparently not."

"Must've been some bath-"

"Oh yes, yes it was," Helen smiled in a rather self-pleasing way. "It was probably my best bath in a long, long while. But never mind me – what about you?"

"What about me?"

Helen pointed at the birds. "Oh! Well, I-I am not sure," Abby admitted. "Is there anything that you can tell me for a start?"

"Hmm... Ruled the South American prairies for around three or four million years, hunting down small or slow-moving animals, used speed rather than brute strength to bring down prey, let it bleed to death before eating it, are rather cautious because of their hollow bird bones, died out during the Ice Age period due to competition with sabre-tooth cats and the like. Oh, and they know how to use their long necks to maximum efficiency – they could use them to drag monkeys out of trees and such, so don't get too close to them."

"Drag monkeys out of trees? I thought that they lived in prairies."

"They did, but eventually sabre-tooth cats began to push them out of the prairies for real, so they had to find new places to live, including the Amazonian jungle. Only it didn't really go too well, they were too adapted for prairie life, so they died out. But before they did, well, they improvised – and that included dragging monkeys and the like out of trees when given the chance."

"Hah. Interesting," Abby said thoughtfully, turning back to the terror birds, but her contemplation was interrupted by Connor's rather triumphant re-emergence, as he appeared on the scene and proclaimed:

"I did it!"

"Did what? Already? On the first try? No way!" Helen fired back. "Mr. Temple, you're being hasty-"

"No, I am not. Neither you nor Nick may have been technically savvy, but I am! Why don't you go and see what I have done?"

"Let's just go," Abby said slowly. "Otherwise, he'll just get onto our nerves until he goes and does it anyways – this way, we'll at least be able to control and direct his enthusiasm."

"That sounds reasonable enough, let's go."

And so they went.

6.

"Ta-da!!" Connor said proudly as soon as they exited the ARC's main building and came into one of the secondary parking lots adjacent to it. "Behold my invention!"

"What invention? You just re-wired my main time anomaly manifestation device with your stabilizer-"

"Exactly! It was simple, really, once I understood what each button did-"

"And the energy cost? I have also shown how much energy it consumed-"

"It doesn't matter – my machine isn't exactly energy cheap either, but Lester – when he learned this – he just gave me a green light in regards to cash," Connor said excitedly.

"Hah," Helen's poker face was still on. "I bet that that Christine Johnson woman would've been happy to learn that little chestnut to blind-side Lester right-on, eh?"

"Yeah – killing her was one of the better things that you did to the ARC, according to Lester," Connor nodded, looking rather discomfited for a change. "They say that once news of her death reached the PM and others, they actually threw a party after her wake."

"Yeah, it was a seventies disco-dance party – personally, I thought that it was tacky," Abby added, beginning to grow rather disturbed by Helen Cutter's poker face. "I mean, yeah, she was... I mean, you were almost one of us – almost, because you killed Stephen, and Nick, and it's kind of hard to forgive you for that, thought you certainly do try and all, but, anyways, as far as the ARC went, you were somebody, while Christine... I don't know, she was just an arrogant female person of Lester without his better qualities – you know, kind of how a raptor is like a jackal, but also-?"

"Yeah, I remember you mentioning it... anyways, uh, Connor, I see that you're trying to for early Cretaceous now?"

"What? Oh, oh yes," Connor said, clearly relieved by the abrupt shift in the conversation for a change. "And incidentally, that's where we went the first time, and by 'we' I mean me and Abby back in the morning."

"Really? So you have figured out what sort of a meat-eater has attacked you two back then?"

"Yeah – the back ridge was a giveaway: we were dealing with acrocanthosaurus, or simply two acros," Connor said calmly. "They're really interesting creatures, hardly known to science-"

"No, they're not," Abby said firmly, "they're just like the giganotosaurus – terrifying, maybe even majestic, but interesting? No, no way."

"Now, Abby-"

"Connor, what are we even arguing about? Whether dinosaurs are only interesting, or simply majestic? What's the difference?"

"Well, you don't want to _study_ a majestic animal, you just go and see in the zoo-"

"Connor, I _work_ at the zoo, and let me tell you, there's plenty of studying of animals done there-"

Helen cleared her throat. "People, as fascinating as your argument is, I want to see what Connor Temple did in terms of advancing chronological technology, okay?"

"There's no need of being sarcastic-"

"I'm not sarcastic! When I married Nick, I was so in love with him that I bent over backwards – and I don't mean that in a sexual sense – to accommodate him and his mammoth mother, that old... never mind. Well, you have seen as to where _that_ approach has lead, and so I sincerely hope that you two will avoid that path."

"Oh. Right," Connor slowly said. "Well, I-I guess that I now show you how it all works, right?" and he flipped the switch.

7.

It was actually a very good thing that Helen was standing next to Connor: as soon as the time anomaly manifested and a solid stream of water burst forth, aiming straight for Connor like a massive battering ram, Helen pulled Connor down and flicked the switch closing the time anomaly and letting the cut-off water collapse into a puddle on the ground.

"Mr. Temple," Helen began in her teacher's voice and Connor gulped, sensing that he was going to catch it now. "What would you call _this_?" She pulled-off a dead something off his invention.

"It's a squid?" Abby suggested meekly from her place in the lot.

"No, but a good try. It's not a squid because it has a shell," Helen said, softening somewhat, "and moreover, it's not a curved shell, so it's not an ammonite either."

"It's a - it's a belemnite, right?" Connor said, also meekly. "They died out at the end of the Cretaceous."

"Very good," Helen nodded and dropped the armoured mollusc into Connor's hands. "Now, Mr. Temple-"

"Can I ask a question?" Abby asked, trying not to actually raise her hand or anything. "How exactly did we end up with water and prehistoric squids? This morning we came onto dry end – it was a sea shore, but we were on land."

"Ah, thank you for leading me to my point," Helen looked down onto Connor with definite disapproval. "Mr. Temple, in your calculations you forgot the little thing called the Earth's rotation around its' axis – you forgot that back all of those millions of years, Earth did just that, and what was dry land in the morning rotates with the rest of the planet and is replaced by a sea as time goes on. And furthermore, the fact that you have moved through space, as well through time-"

"What are you three been doing?" a loud, angry, shrill voice resonated through the lot. The voice belonged to Jenny Lewis – and she wasn't happy.

8.

"Hello, Jenny," Helen seemed unflustered by the other woman's anger. "What has happened on your end?"

"You mean you don't know?" Jenny glared with suspicion at the time traveller.

"Oh, please, just tell us – after all, neither Connor nor Abby know."

"Right. Well, we've been hit by a mother of all black-outs – literally. All electric devices have just stopped working!" Jenny exclaimed, still a bit shrilly.

There was a pause, as Abby and Connor first exchanged looks with each other and then looked at Connor's new invention. "What?" Jenny exclaimed. "What-"

"Jenny, if you move a bit to your left, you'll step right onto a Cretaceous jellyfish," Helen said mildly, "and in a more general sense, Connor here is beginning to understanding that modern and future technologies require different amount of energy to function properly."

"Connor," Jenny sighed heavily, "you tried to goof-off or something, hasn't you?"

"I didn't, I-"

"Mr. Temple made a slight mistake, worsened by James Lester's high-handed approach to technology and science," Helen said calmly. "Please don't be angry at him, be angry at me, if anyone."

"Why should I be angry at you-"

"Because of this," Helen replied, as she pulled out a different time anomaly manifestation device out of her pocket, and pressed a series of buttons. Immediately, a time anomaly manifested itself, and another person fell out of it. Then the time anomaly vanished, but nobody was watching it – instead, everybody stared at Christine Johnson being very much alive, even if very scared and confused, crawling on the parking lot's asphalt.

9.

The pause went for a long while, and then Jenny turned back to Helen, even as Lorraine (she had come out a bit after Jenny did) continued to stare in fascination at Christine crawling and staring at nothing in particular in the parking lot.

"You're right, I am angry, but not because you brought her back," she told the other woman, "but because you didn't bring Nick-"

"I can't bring Nick back," Helen replied bitterly. "He is really dead, just like Stephen. Christine Johnson, on the other hand, has never been dead, but, ah, put into storage instead."

"What about a future predator? There was one," Abby spoke up.

"A hologram projection made by a projector that I bought on e-bay in America after these things went out of style in about a century or two from now, but by modern standards they're quite convincing, wouldn't you two agree?" Helen turned to Abby and Connor, who nodded in agreement, instinctively.

"Right, I see," Jenny exhaled. "Well, you know what? I am not exactly even angry any more – just curious to enquire what do we do with her?"

"We can put her into a holding cell for now – after all, she's legally dead, Mr. Lester has told me and my direct co-workers about it; she's a legal non-entity, in fact!" Lorraine spoke-up suddenly. "Speaking of Mr. Lester, I, ah, I think I heard something about giving Connor Temple here a 'green-light' permission regarding financing his experiments?"

"I, actually, got a permission slip of his regarding that," Connor said carefully, turning and facing Lorraine fully for the first time. "I can show it to you, if you would like it."

"Oh yes, do bring it," Lorraine nodded, and added, with somewhat more uncertainty in her voice. "I and Ms. Lewis have a plan of sorts regarding the possible time anomaly in your home as well as several other problems that have risen during your absence."

"We weren't-" Connor began, but Abby, who understood that Lorraine was mentioning her sickness, silenced him with a glare instead.

"He'll be there," she said simply.

10.

It was dark now, though the rain had abated, and instead the night once again had descended onto London, though the stars still weren't shining in the sky. Connor and Abby sat in the guest wing of the ARC and carefully looked at each other.

"So-"

"So-"

"Abby, you first."

"Right. So, you don't mind that you got your plug pulled, metaphorically speaking-"

"Are you kidding? We've got sort-of promoted, at least temporarily, we're getting a pay raise, I may actually be growing-up-"

"What about the dinosaurs?"

"Oh, they're not going anywhere," Connor said calmly. "Make no mistake – one day I will go to the land where acros roam and pliosaurs lurk in the surf, but for now we'll have to take it slow."

"And you don't mind?"

"I can handle it – it's time for me to become more mature – what?" Connor asked curiously, seeing Abby grimace at the last word.

"Well, this morning, before we almost got eaten, I was thinking along the same lines, which means that I will have to, well, Caroline Steele will be a part of my life as well," Abby sighed. "Still, that's no longer too important – there's also the fact that we've got a promotion. I mean, so far we've been mostly in the secondary positions, if not to Nick and Stephen, then to Danny, and as for Becker-"

"Abby, relax," Connor smiled. "We are growing up, and things are changing, but we will rise to the challenges and master them, I am sure."


	7. Connor and Abby bring home a roommate

**Connor and Abby bring home a roommate**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but of Impossible Pictures_

1.

"Hey mate, get ready with the sails, because a fair wind is blowing!" Connor was cheerfully signing under his breath. "Abby, you ready to go home?"

Abby glared, not quite understanding Connor's enthusiasm. The skies were grey and overcast, the rain was coming down steadily in small clumps, the puddles were gaping wide on the doorway, and overall it was a very typical autumn morning, complete with a cold wind blowing. "How can you be so cheerful?" Abby asked her friend. "It certainly can't be the weather, it's ghastly!"

"Yes, yes it is, but after spending the night in the ARC's guest quarters I am happy to leave anyhow, you know," Connor shrugged. "Besides, if worst comes to worst... there's no need to be glum on top of it, you know?"

"Connor," Abby said after a brief pause. "You're not making too much sense, you know?"

"I'm sorry, but, well, I guess I am just a cheerful person – usually," Connor shrugged, his face actually clouding now. "Besides, today will probably be quite exciting, you know?"

"No, _yesterday_ was exciting, today will be just dealing with yesterday's spillovers," Abby shrugged. "Hey, the fog is lifting up, see?"

"That's an abrupt shift in the conversation – what brought it on?" Connor asked suspiciously, "and besides, the fog is setting down again-" he blinked. "Are we arguing about the _weather_ now?"

"Connor," Abby sighed, "yes we are, because we're dawdling. You don't _intend_ to be actually _late_, do you?"

Connor exhaled, clearly upset that Abby had cut through their little ploy. "No."

2. Several hours earlier

"Helen, good morning," Jenny smiled, though the smile was somewhat subdued. "Are you excited about today?"

"Yes."

Jenny raised an eyebrow. "That's... laconic. Are you nervous about today?"

"Yes."

Jenny raised her other eyebrow. "And are you sure that it has nothing to do with last night?"

"No."

"Then please talk about it," Jenny said, trying to be stern. "I'm sure that it not that serious."

It was Helen's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Very well. What exactly were you thinking when you suggested that I become the head of the new department, aka Connor's boss or something along those lines? I am an anthropologist Jenny, I study human evolution – the time anomalies are definitely not human evolution, in fact I suspect that it was the other way around: our descendants invented the technology that made time anomalies possible-"

"Look," Jenny waved her hand in a sort of dismissive way. "Before you try to sidetrack me, let me point out that Connor himself deals in dinosaurs, mainly, which means he probably no better in dealing with this than you are, or maybe even worse, because he lacks your experience."

"Experience comes with time, quickly enough, especially if it is coupled with survival," Helen shook her head. "I have no intention of becoming redundant."

"Oh Helen!" Jenny exhaled. "You're not going to – look. You do look at Connor as some sort of a student nowadays, right?"

"When I see him and his girlfriend argue, it reminds me of me and Nick at that age – we were so young and stupid," Helen said quietly. "I cannot help but feel – or rather, I cannot help but want to try and help them not to end the way I and Nick had."

"That's very... noble," Jenny said after a long pause, "and if you ever try to use that line on them the resulting fireworks will be even more impressive, but that is my point. Helen, look. Everybody grows old, and that is why we have children, to father – or, well, mother – the next generation."

Helen gave Jenny an unreadable look. "That's an interesting philosophy, but let's remember, for the moment, that I am _still_ evil."

"Oh," Jenny grinned wildly, "do try to remember that while _you_'re an anthropologist, _I_ had to study liberal arts and sciences – you do not want to mess with me with philosophy... At any rate, I think that you were never evil: amoral, venal, and corrupt – certainly; arrogant and insane – you said so yourself; but never evil per se."

"I deserve that," Helen said slowly, "but I think we're getting sidetracked: me working for the ARC is a good idea why?"

"Because you don't have anything else to do – your drawings are obviously just a second-hand hobby after science," Jenny replied. "You're a scientist, Helen, hence why you gotten into drawing in the first place. You need something or someone to challenge you as well – otherwise you can get tricked by someone like Leek."

"That was a low blow, but you may be onto something here, Jenny," Helen said, with something suspiciously like a smile flickering briefly upon her face, "but let's not get carried away, Jenny. First, I want to get over the book release, okay?"

"Okay," Jenny nodded, seeing that this wasn't the time to push it. "But think about it, please?"

3. Now

"Well, we're here!" Abby turned to Connor. "And the rains have stopped as well."

"Lucky us," Connor muttered, as he glanced at the sky: the fog was still hanging up there and heavy clouds were being herded along by the wind like some sort of a low-key wild hunt. "Abby, you want to know something?"

"What, Connor?"

"This isn't about Nick's death and the ARC's temporary destruction anymore. It's Jenny and Lorraine now who are going over Lester's head-"

"And you were excited about it last night-"

"I was just putting a brave front for you..." Connor's voice trailed away as he recognized several people in the crowd from his past. "Abby, get into the book shop – I think that the others will need our support!"

4.

The opening is going on smoothly enough, Jenny muses. Helen may have a very limited range of facial expressions beyond the ultimate poker face and some very similar nondescript expressions of amusement, bemusement, curiosity and irritation, but her smile seems to be pleasant enough, even if rather strained around the edges, though you could never tell unless you were practicing-

And then a stranger – a rather dignified-looking older gentleman approached the anthropologist turned time traveller, and the latter stiffened, so Jenny began to edge closer to them: whenever Helen's hackles were raised in the past, some sort of a bad thing was usually sure to happen.

"Hello, Helen," the other woman's interlocutor speaks cheerfully. "It's so good to see you again – you aged just fine."

"So have you, sir," Helen admitted in a voice that was carefully calibrated to please. "How is your circle of colleagues and friends?"

"Oh, just fine, just fine, Helen," the man speaks with a throaty chuckle. "I see that after Nick's demise you have come back from your domestic life and back into your theories with a vengeance."

"No, I have changed them somewhat – everything and everyone changes with age," Helen smiles calmly, but her smile now has an edge. "If they don't, they stagnate and die out, no matter how successful and powerful they once were. Father Time waits for no man."

"You have grown philosophical Helen, in your old age," the man replied, musingly. "Ah, well. You know that when I backed-up Nick in those arguments of yours I never expected the two of you to drift so far apart? Your marriage seemed to have been really working at that time."

"Yes sir, it did – at that time," Helen's voice was completely emotionless by now. "Here, have one of my first books for free – it's on me." She thrust one of her books into the man's hands. "I'm sure that your grandkids will enjoy the pictures."

A mix of pain, ruefulness and embarrassment rushed across the man's face. "I'm afraid that they're not as enthusiastic about my job as I have been at their age... but thank you for the gift, really. Now, uh, about your sponsors-"

"Um, Helen, this does sound somewhat like our cue," Connor and Abby had joined Helen and her interlocutor, "but, in reality, Lorraine Wickers has called to say that the center's HQ has just come onto another emergency, and since you are a part of the field team-"

"Of course, of course," Helen smiled graciously, "sir, may I introduce you – albeit briefly – to Connor Temple, one of Nick's best students? I'm _sorry_ that I have to leave so abruptly, but I'm afraid that the job has irregular hours-"

"Can you be more specific?" the man asked, clearly and honestly curious now.

"Ah! Ms. Lewis over here handles such specifics," Helen smiled and pushed Jenny gently towards her interlocutor. "I'm sure that she'll be happy to explain the details to you. Connor, Abby – let's go."

5.

"That was kind of cold what you did to Jenny, she's used to come to the field with us," Connor says as he, Helen and Abby drove away from the book store.

"True," Helen agrees, "but she's gotten somewhat out of shape lately, hasn't she?"

"Yeah," Abby and Connor reluctantly agree, "but still-"

"When dealing with dinosaurs, speed is important," Helen says, "especially with the big ones – their motor skills aren't developed for delicate details or manoeuvres. But there are plenty of smaller predators wandering through the ages, from the raptors to gorgonopsids to the futuristic wolverines, who are much more manoeuvrable, fast and smart than the dinosaurs."

"What futuristic wolverines?" Abby can't help but ask.

"Descendants of the wolverines from about the same time that the giant weasels that currently plague France are," Helen says calmly, "resemble polar bears in character."

Abby winces. "That's just nasty – you think that we'll run into them?"

"I have no idea," Helen shrugs. "I'm willing to bet, though, that this isn't another dinosaur like the ones you met in your home – sort of. Otherwise we'd be urged to go much, much faster – where are we going, though?"

"To the docks," Connor says slowly. "The anomaly has opened in the industrial area of the harbour."

6.

The time anomaly is twinkling brightly and clearly in the otherwise overcast air, and there are no signs of dinosaurs, either singular or plural; however, the air that comes out from it is dry, and hot, and smells of blood.

"So, uh, Jurassic?" Connor suggests weakly, looking up at Helen, who shrugs nonchalantly:

"I have no idea – to me, just like to you, blood of all animals smells the same. Maybe it is the Jurassic time period – or maybe not. Still, the animal that has got out – it is a mammal and not a Mesozoic one either, but a real one."

"I say!" Connor says, as he looks in the direction that Helen is pointing: the creature is the size of a large calf, but is built quite differently: like the ground sloths, whose fossils Connor had studied before joining the ARC team, with a head that resembles a horse's, not a cow's. "I think... that it's a chalicothere of some sorts."

"What's a chalicothere?" Abby asks, genuinely curious, "and don't tell me the obvious!"

"I won't, I won't!" Connor almost laughs. "The chalicotheres were a clan of plant-eating animals, more closer related to horses and zebras, than gazelles and deer."

"I have seen similar animals in the Pliocene Africa," unexpectedly, Helen backs Connor up. "Only then they didn't have claws but more ordinary-looking hooves."

"Yeah, some of them had claws, others had hooves, but they all died out eventually," Connor nodded sagely. "Anyways, all we now have to do is to return the little fellow through the time anomaly-"

"Connor, it smells of _blood_ from there," Abby says slowly, "and the 'little fellow' seems spooked – very spooked. I'm betting that his parents – or older relatives anyways – are out there somewhere, eaten."

"Yes – by them!" Helen says sharply, pointing abruptly in the direction of the time anomaly, through which came three very large animals, resembling dogs, but built rather like bears."

"Connor, what are they?" Abby says quietly.

"Bear-dogs, I bet," Connor thoughtfully replied. "What were they called, anyways? Agriotherium? Sarkastodon? Oh yes, amphicyon! They were probably some of the bigger meat-eaters of that time-"

"And they're going to kill that-that foal!" Abby snaps. "Connor, we got to save it!"

"Abby, we can't!" Connor tries his best not to groan – now is so not the time for Abby to get back to being emotional. "We outnumber them! Well, not exactly outnumber as being tied-" she gets out of the car just as the little chalicothere makes a plaintive sound and the bear-dogs move to attack.

Helen grabs the younger woman harshly by the collar and jerks her backwards. "What are you doing, you crazy-" Abby sputters and falls silent as she sees the grisly spectacle outside: there aren't three bear-dogs, but five – the other two had flanked their prey and prevented it from escaping. Working together, the five bear-dogs didn't give the young herbivore any chance – wouldn't have given Abby any chance either if she'd have tried to get between them and the chalicothere: the bear-dogs are a meter tall each and about two meters long, the size of some of the lions in the zoo, but much heavier and act much more like wild dogs or wolves than bears.

"This isn't good," Connor mutters, his face pale. "We must call the center for back-up, these animals-"

The bear-dogs finish eating the chalicothere and leave back through the time anomaly. Connor, at any rate, notes that at least two of them are bleeding from wounds of their own, which have clearly resulted from chalicothere claws, albeit from bigger ones that had belonged to the now-deceased juvenile. At any rate, the time anomaly closes shut behind the tail of the last bear-dog, and there's only silence and chalicothere bones left on the docks.

"Come on," Helen says gently, seeing how Abby went into something like shock. "We need to clean up still."

7.

Jenny is most unamused when they return to the ARC; still, seeing their own faces, including Abby's shocked one, softens her face somewhat. "What has happened?" she asks quietly, as Helen and Connor help the still-shocked Abby leave their car.

"We have seen some bear-dogs in action," Connor admits. "It wasn't pretty, but at least no lives were lost besides a chalicothere's."

"Say whose?"

"An herbivore, whose species had gone extinct a long time ago," Connor says. "What has happened on your end?"

"Caroline had forced Christine to admit, sort of, that she was behind Leek's little terrorist plot," Jenny shrugs, keeping a careful look at their faces, "but at this point in time it doesn't matter so much anymore – what do you think?"

"Why is _Caroline_ here?" Connor is carefully keeping his voice neutral.

"I think she wants to talk to you," Jenny replies, as if she's stating the obvious, "and speaking of talks, your new 'friend' from the book shop wants to have a tour of the ARC – one of you couldn't have told me that he's a very prominent pillar from the science community?"

"So what does he want from us?" Connor can't help but ask. "I had the impression that the avoided the ARC-"

"Yeah, but your books have peaked their interest," she turns to Helen, "and while Lorraine and I were able to raise enough BS to have him go to the PM for clearance, it won't take him that long." She pauses, "Connor, go and talk to Caroline, please. Helen, help me get Abby into the medical wing."

"I'm okay," Abby mumbles.

"Perhaps," Jenny says gently yet firmly. "But we're still going to have you checked out on the grounds of shock, okay?"

With only minimal reluctance, Abby submits.

8.

"Helen, what was the big idea leaving me behind to deal with that man?" Jenny exhales with an angry huff, but Helen seems to be unimpressed by her attitude. "I mean, I am a part of the team-"

"Yes, you are," Helen says gently, "but there is the little problem of you steadily getting heavier – you just don't want to exercise, do you?"

"...no," Jenny finally admits, "but what's the point? All of my life I tried to be in shape and be pretty, because, well, I wanted to be pretty for others – my boyfriends, my eventual fiancé, Nick – and it didn't pay-off when I wanted it to, especially with Nick. Now, well, I seem to be shaping up to be an old maid, and it just doesn't seem to be any reason-"

"Jenny," Helen takes the other woman gently yet firmly by the elbow, "we're working under conditions where quickness and manoeuvrability are a very important requirement: you never know when you have to run away from a ceratosaurus, say, or a sand storm. Unless you try to get in shape you'll be stuck behind the lines, in the office – unless that is what you want?"

"I don't know what I want anymore – I just don't want to go back the way I was when Nick died," Jenny whimpered quietly. "I am not sure just how I want to look either!"

"How about we start on the power walking tomorrow?" Helen sighed. "This should help you decide what do you want and how you want to look."

"Thanks-"

"Oh, don't thank me – Christine Johnson's going to be your motivator during the exercises-"

"What?!!"

It was at this moment that Lorraine chose to appear, saying that the ARC had a very important visitor, so could Ms. Lewis – being the center's PR agent – go out and greet him?

9.

Connor found Caroline sitting in one of the secondary offices of the ARC and walked over to her:

"Hey!" He wanted to add some useful or witty comments about Abby's acceptance of her, but somehow what came out of his mouth was:

"So, what's that about Christine Johnson?"

"I heard Leek mention the name of Johnson several times during our discussions and asked her if she knew him – and she somehow just imploded, really, and admitted that she was behind him," Caroline replied, watching Connor carefully. "And then Ms. Lewis had this strange look on her face and told her that Christine has already paid for this, somewhat, so it doesn't count, and Christine Johnson had some sort of a breakdown and had to be taken to the hospital wing – where's your friend?"

"You mean Abby? She's there as well – she's in shock."

"More terror birds?"

"Bear-dogs actually, but that's not what you think," Connor shook his head.

"I've booked us an appointment with the doctor this Saturday-" Caroline began, but abruptly shifted gears. "Oh, hello, Abby."

"Hello to you to," Abby said dismissively and shifted to Connor. "We have another problem."

"What is it?" Connor said warily: something was wrong. Abby's next words had proven rather neatly this theory to be true, too.

"Connor? Remember when Helen caused us to be stranded in the Cretaceous? Remember our second day – before we jumped into the Jurassic instead?"

"Yeah – that was the day when we..." Connor trailed away, as realization hit for the first in weeks.

"You had sex – not the safe version, obviously," Caroline has also realized what has happened. "Connor has gotten to you too, haven't you?"

"That's not how I would describe it, but yeah, exactly," Abby looks at Caroline. "And to think that I have just realized that I'm going to be more mature and make you a part of my life as well."

"Well then, I booked a doctor's appointment for Saturday – you want to come along too?"

"Yes – but I still don't like or trust you," Abby says slowly. "But that's why I am coming along all the same: one way or another, when it ends this Saturday, I'll be there."

The two women look at each other more guardedly yet less violently than before, while Connor just stands there as realization that he may end up as a father twice over strikes him in the head time and again.

10.

"Hello again, sir," Jenny's professional smile is back on her face, and there it'll stay, no matter what. "Let me first say that we're sorry about the bother, but-"

"Oh no," the gentleman from the book shop – Nick's former scientific superior – smiles calmly. "It was no bother at all – this old body needs all the exercise that it can get."

"Splendid," Jenny nods as she looks-over the papers signed by the PM's signature. "So, what questions about our center do you want answered?"

"Here's the thing," for the first time today the interlocutor seems somewhat unsure of himself, "for months since the center has been opened there have been some rather crazy rumours about it, yet nothing concrete. Can you please summarize as quickly as possible what _is_ it that you do and how does Helen Cutter configure in it?"

"Oh, we're dealing with the breakthroughs of the fourth dimension," Jenny said airily, "with Helen Cutter assisting Connor Temple – and vice versa – with the more paleontological issues."

"I see," the aged scientist said softly, "and here is the thing. Many years ago, when Helen was still young, only recently married to Nick she was quickly gaining reputation as one of the more talented yet eccentric members of her field. Anthropology, as an aside, often does encourage various unorthodox theories in its' adepts, but that wasn't the point. The thing is that Nick was asked to reign in his wife, to prevent her from doing something that could damage her career – as a prominent scientist and a woman she had a lot riding on it and her philosophy wasn't easing things any – but unfortunately he didn't do a very good job."

"A good job," Jenny repeated mechanically, but her interlocutor blithely went on.

"In my opinion, Nick and Helen had married too young, too quickly, and once maturity began to settle in, they began to have problems... Still, Helen managed to get her doctorate without any visible problems, and frankly too intent involvement on their family life would've backfired badly, no doubt about it, on both them and others, so no further intrusions were made. Things came to a boil, obviously, when Helen had left Nick under suspicious circumstances. Obviously, now it can be comprehended that our Majesty's government was involved and that the ARC under the patronage of James Lester had been in the planning for a long time, and," he took a breath, "one of the latest employees is one Sarah Page, another promising female scientist who is also highly unorthodox. So," he paused, and for the first time looked like no one more than a tired old man, "when you will launch your scientific warhead, try to remember that we, scientific conservatives aren't truly retrogrades and obscurtantists, would you? Sir Lester, good day."

The palaeontologist turned around and left, leaving Jenny and others in company of James Lester, who had finally returned from France...

11.

"So, Sir James now is it?" Helen asked mildly, watching Lester without any particular emotion on her face. "It must've been a lot of weasels back in France."

"Yes, Dr. Cutter, it was – I mean, there were," James Lester exhaled sharply. "And by the way, do you prefer Cutter or Hunter, your maiden name?"

"My maiden name, actually," Helen continued, matching her poker face against Lester's. "My married name carries too much baggage with it, don't you think?" Her vocal tone was mild and that was probably what finally set Lester off.

"Of all the colossal gall!" he shouted at no one in particular. "Why does this keep happening? A simple save-and-retrieve mission turns into an international incident that turns into an international emergency when giant weasels from the future, of all things, follow Mr. Quinn into the breach, and back home-"

"James," Danny Quinn chose to make the appearance on the scene, "did you know that there's a really convincing Christine Johnson look-alike currently being told-off by Lorraine-" he froze and stared as he saw that James Lester was busy talking not only with a rather different-looking Jenny Lewis, but with another very familiar person as well.

"Hello Danny," Helen said, half turning around, her smile now having a definite shark-like quality. "Lorraine ought to have told you: this whole coming back to life thing? It's contagious."

12.

It was at this tense moment that Lorraine chose to make her appearance:

"Mr. Lester? Sir? The ITV has just broadcasted live that some sort of a giant T-Rex-like dinosaur with a sail on its' back is stalking the shoreline of Thames!"

It was then that it all fell apart.


	8. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures._

1.

There was a general pause and then everybody just frankly stared at Lorraine. "A sail?" Jenny said sceptically. "Not a ridge, or a row of plates, or some sort of boney armour?"

"Yes!" Lorraine said firmly. "It's a sail, like on that dinosaur from the last Jurassic Park movie."

"Spinosaurus, then," Helen said flatly. "Does it look, incidentally, like the movie version?"

"Actually... no," Lorraine admitted, clearly flustered by this revelation. "It looks more like a crocodile, actually, especially in the head – but um, it's still very much a meat-eating dinosaur."

"A fish-eating, rather, if it has a head like a crocodile's – or a crocodile mimic's," Connor said, flanked by Abby who now looked better than when she returned after their impromptu bear-dog encounter. "Of course, crocodiles eat meat too, but the spinosaur side of the meat-eating family was at least partially specialized to eat primarily fish rather than meat-"

"Mr. Temple. The dinosaur appears to be 12 meters long – probably bigger than the G-Rex you fought in the airport. Can the field team go and do something, please?" Lorraine said in a somewhat – just a bit, really – firmer voice than she usually used, then caught herself, blushed, and sort of sidled into a corner; or at least looked like that what she wanted to do.

"Sure, we'll go, we'll go," Connor said in a somewhat placating tone. "Any words of wisdom, doctor?" he turned to Helen, his voice only partially sarcastic.

"No, you're the dinosaur expert, you tell us," Helen said back, without flinching. "And by the way, your boss wants to say hi."

"What do you mean-? Oh, hey Danny, hello Mr. Lester, you're finally back!"

"Yes, we are," James Lester shrugged, visibly struggling to retain his self-control. "What that I hear about you being a secondary department head or something?"

"Meh, a time anomaly has opened almost in our kitchen, so it was decided that me and Abby are the best people to take care of it; and since with your departure to France and Abby's sickness the PM had sort of proceeded to cut down on finances... well, Lorraine and Jenny figured out a way to fix that-"

"Right, well, I will look over what they have achieved, _together with them_, actually, while you take Mr. Quinn and others and deal with Godzilla's cousin that is rampaging our shores," Lester snapped. "Try and prevent him from reaching France's shores while you're at it, will you? The less we have to do with those goddamn frogs, the better!"

Danny opened his mouth, clearly not-quite-agreeing with the other man, but the official head of the ARC gave him such a look, that Danny opted to keep his mouth shut. "Now go!" Lester said tersely.

The ARC's field team went.

2.

It was a cold ride in the van, and not just because the October winds were blowing harshly through the streets: Danny was obviously giving Helen the cold shoulder, and the latter was blithely ignoring him, preferring to observe the clouds in the sky outside the vehicle – and then, at long last, Danny's patience broke.

"You!" he told loudly the anthropologist turned time traveller, "I still don't trust you; if you-"

"Hm? You were saying something, Danny?" Helen nonchalantly turned to face the irate man. "I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention. Can you repeat what you just said?"

Connor groaned. He'd seen this type of interaction before – on Naruto™ anime TV show, in which a passionate speech of one man was blithely ignored by the other; but while on the anime this sort of interaction was kind of fun, here it definitely was not, or at least Connor didn't think so.

And neither did Sarah Page, it seemed. "Why did we have to take her along?" she muttered to Abby. "She may have saved you from the sickness, and she may not be crazy, but-"

"Look," Abby muttered, "she may be hard to swallow but she's... she keeps her head on, and can be counted on preventing us from doing something stupid – like getting out of the car to save a chalicothere without taking a good look around and take a bear-dog headcount-"

"Can you explain more fully please?" Sarah asked. "What are bear-dogs, for a start?"

"Well, while you were returning from France, me and Connor took her to help us with a time anomaly," Abby explained slowly. "Considering that before it she pulled us out of the early Cretaceous when two meat-eating dinosaurs – not spinosaurs, some other ones – were going to eat us as well and after that she prevented Connor from doing something really stupid... right. The bear-dogs. Look both like bears and dogs, but are capable of smart hunting manoeuvres as well as raptors – or the terror birds. They chased a plant-eater from their time through the time anomaly, and I almost got in their way-"

"You couldn't fight them off?" Sarah asked incredulously – usually the younger woman was quite ready to fight.

"There were five of them, and I didn't spot all of them at once," Abby said slowly, "plus as I said before, they were smart, smart enough to work in a pack, almost like modern wild dogs or lions, and they were big, as big as some of the modern bears, too. If I got in their way...I would not have been able to take them on..."

"Oh," Sarah said quietly: she could see that the young woman wasn't lying but was clearly bothered by that realization, and frankly, Sarah herself wasn't too happy: usually Abby was a source of confidence or self-confidence at the ARC.

"So, what about you? How did Danny end up in Corsica of all places? Did he want to meet Napoleon or something?" Abby decided to change the discussion.

"Not exactly," Sarah blushed from discomfiture. "Remember how we picked you up from the Jurassic instead of the Cretaceous, straightaway? Well, in Danny's case he ended up on some futuristic island inhabited by giant weasels, some sort of small wild swine, lizards of some sort and insects – and then, when we tried to bring him back to the ARC the apparatus just died."

"Maybe it ran out of juice? Apparently all time-travelling technology is very energy-consuming," Abby suggested carefully. "Anyways, so that's how Danny ended up in Corsica?"

"Yeah, and so did the giant weasels and the small pigs that they preyed on," Sarah nodded, "only the pigs didn't get as much publicity as the weasels: being small and harmless they weren't as interesting to the public, I guess."

"So now the French know about the time anomalies as well?"

"Yes, and they're probably already working up some sort of a research center of their own," Sarah nodded. "It actually is a good thing that Jenny and Ms. Wickers began to bulk up the ARC already, so to speak-"

Before Abby could reply, though, their car stopped short with a jerk and they saw the dinosaur for the first time.

3.

"So, James, how was France?"

"As corrupt and stupid as always," Lester snapped as he sat down sharply at his seat. "Now, what's going on around here? How did you two arrive at this point – and how did you take me along for the ride?"

"Sir?"

"How did it all come to be?" James Lester elaborated, somewhat sharply.

"Well, I decided to seek Helen on my own to seek answers – I didn't know that Danny, Connor and Abby went out to kill her – and when I did... she actually had to rescue me twice from some sort of a marine reptile and the extinction event."

"The what?"

"You know, the giant rock from space that killed the dinosaurs? Anyways, once we settled-in at the Pleistocene and all I offered Helen a second chance – as far as only me went, of course," Jenny smiled ruefully, "and for a while I worked as her PR agent to get the release of her first book."

"I saw it. For something that holds little text but plenty of illustrations this is a rather good book," Lester said thoughtfully. "This can be a _good_ publicity stunt for the ARC, yes..."

"Anyways, one night we ran into Connor and learned that Abby was dying, and Helen decided that it would suit her purposes better if Abby was to live, so she healed her using some sort of futuristic technology, and that's when we began to sort of get roped back into the ARC's service. Not that we had much field work to do other than handling a pair of escaped terror birds, but still... Then a time anomaly manifested itself in Connor and Abby's flat, and- oh, I believe it's all in the reports."

"Yes, yes it all is," Lester said thoughtfully. "Now can we count on Helen to remain loyal to us?"

"Well, I think we can – her misadventure with Leek had given her a reality check regarding her own limits...and I guess that she is patriotic enough, because otherwise she could've sold what she knows about time travel to French, or Russians, or Americans or whoever," Jenny shrugged.

"Uh, excuse me, but I think that you should turn on the TV," Lorraine shyly interrupted the others' discussion. "They're confronting the dinosaur – I think that you should see it."

They did.

4.

The dinosaur was huge, probably as big as the G-Rex that they had once encountered in the airport, though looking more low-slung due to the great crest on its' back. It was covered in scaleless skin the colour of sun-baked clay, and despite its' overall size, the dinosaur's limbs, tail and jaws appeared almost slender, almost like some sort of a wading bird's – that weighted around 6 tons! Plus, the look in the spinosaurus' yellow eyes was anything but birdlike – rather, it was the gaze of a crocodile, coupled with jaws that resembled those of a crocodile as well, unlike the shorter and taller jaws of the meat-eaters that had attacked Abby and Connor in the early Cretaceous some time ago.

"So? Do we have to do anything?" Becker asked Connor, looking rather intimidated by Godzilla's great-crested cousin, if just a little. "Because if it is cold-blooded, won't it just keel-over by itself under these weather conditions?"

"I'm not sure – are the dinosaurs cold-blooded, first of all?" Connor looked at Helen with a somewhat guilty expression. "'Cause if it is hot-blooded-"

Helen shrugged. "Some of the dinosaurs – like the raptors and segnosaurs – definitely were warm-blooded, just like birds, while others, namely the Cretaceous species of sauropods, developed some sort of inner heat source via their great bulk; at least they could endure the occasional bout of cold weather without any particular loss of their health. In this case, though, we're dealing with a sailback dinosaur: if its' sail is anything like the sail of the early Permian pelycosaurs, then as long as there's sun in the sky, it will warm the blood circulating in its' crest and combined with its' overall body heat it can last for a long time even here-"

"It's autumn, Helen, and it's already quite late afternoon with quite a bit of cloud cover," Danny snapped. "Night will fall within an hour, and then we'll be stuck with a giant dinosaur in the dark."

"Danny," Connor said slowly, "I'm guessing that this is an aquatic, or at least a water-dependant animal – it might take to the water at night to ambush land-dwellers who would come over for a drink."

"Only it's Thames. In the middle of autumn. At night. The animal will likely get too cold and sluggish and drown or catch hypothermia," Abby said urgently. Everybody looked at her. "What? It was a childish bet, I was eight and it wasn't in Thames. Are we to rescue the giant meat-eating dinosaur or what?"

"Why not?" Becker said suddenly. "I mean, we've handled the last giant meat-eating dinosaur as well, haven't we?"

"Yes, we had it chase Danny in a helicopter," Connor nodded. "I mean, Danny was in the helicopter, not the G-Rex-"

"We understand, except for Helen and Sarah we were all there," Abby said gently, trying to shake the image of a dinosaur pilot. "But we don't have a helicopter now-"

"I," Helen said slowly, listening attentively to the discussion, "have an ultralight aircraft."

"And you bought it a couple of centuries in the future, on E-Bay," Abby said wryly.

"No, it was actually several months ago, but yes, it was on E-Bay," Helen shrugged. "Some lesser celebrity had died under undisclosed circumstances and they were having a sale on his things, including that ultralight... what" she asked, seeing the winces on the faces of her new co-workers. "Did I say something wrong again?"

"No, no, just same bad memories," Connor said slowly. "Ah, can you go and get the ultralight plane – maybe with Danny?"

"I don't know – I never flown it with other people..." Helen said thoughtfully. "Now what?"

"_You_ had _flown_ it?" Becker said, unbelievingly. "Do you know how?"

"It's a glider with a motor in it," Helen said dismissively, "and when it came to gliding, I just followed the pterosaurs and used the motor only occasionally," she paused. "Still, it probably has only enough fuel and what-not for just one more flight, nothing more. I never claimed that it was in good condition," she finished on a somewhat defensive note.

"I think that we ought to fly it all the same, before it gets completely dark – hopefully the spinosaurus is omnivorous enough to take a shot at it anyways," Connor sighed.

"You don't reach 6 tons of live weight by being a picky eater," Abby rolled her eyes. "Helen, hop to it!"

"Right," Helen nodded and pulled out her spare time manifestation device, pressing a sequence of buttons on it and opening a time anomaly. "Danny, after you."

"...you kept the ultralight _in the past_?!" Danny goggled.

"Well, the ARC seems to be a bit skimpy on the hangar facilities, so yes," Helen shrugged. "Danny Quinn, are you coming? Because the battery may be running down."

"...yes, I am." The police officer turned dinosaur-wrangler still hadn't gotten over the fact that they were going to fly an ultralight that had been kept in a prehistoric cave, but he wasn't the type to back-down either. "Let's go."

Together they walked into the manifested time anomaly and disappeared.

5.

After the cool gloom of an English evening, the weather... was suspiciously similar to Danny's eye, save that it now seemed to be lighter in the east, not west, which meant sunrise, rather than sunset. Before that, still, Danny found his surroundings suspiciously the same – until the morning's fog began to lift.

"Helen," he said slowly, "_when_ and _where_ are we?"

"Judging from the pterosaurs, I'd say early Cretaceous – if Connor was here, he'd appreciate the joke-"

"Raptors."

"Where?" Helen whirled around – Danny noticed that she now had _two_ blades, her original Bowie and a newer, thinner, bifacial blade – and stared into four pairs of eyes of giant raptors.

Well, compared to the spinosaurus, the raptors weren't particular giants, they were probably only half again as tall as the humans; however, considering that the last raptors that Danny had seen, when he, Connor and Abby were chasing Helen were barely higher than their waistlines, the descriptive word 'giant' seemed to be pretty accurate all the same.

Silence fell, as Danny and Helen stared at the slightly feathered dinosaurs, who stared down at them, in curiously bird-like expressions, chirping and squeaking quietly. This tense, and rather uneven stand-off went-on for several minutes, and then the raptors snapped their jaws and lashed-out their teeth.

"Into the cave, now," Helen barked and instinctively, Danny complied: now was one of the wrong places to argue. As they fled, the raptors began to slowly advance.

"What's going on?" Danny huffed as Helen began to hurriedly pull down the tarp from an ultralight. "We cannot feed all of them, do we?"

"I'm guessing that you haven't smelt the blood or heard the flies buzzing nearby," Helen snarled. "They have made a kill somewhere nearby and they're protecting it: they think that we're scavenger-thieves after their kill and that's not good. Get in and start flying."

The scanty light in the cave was abruptly cut-off by the shadows of the raptors as the latter entered the cave, somewhat carefully, their longish snouts sniffing the air and the odd smells that circulated in it.

Danny pushed forwards the main lever. The ultralight plane sprung forwards, its' propeller whirling and picking up speed as fast as it could...

6.

"Where – where are they?" Sarah nervously muttered to herself as Abby and Connor argued with Becker that now still wasn't the time to use shooting to attract the spinosaurus' attention and to get it out of the water.

As a matter of fact, Helen and Danny had gone for less than an hour, but already the sun had almost set and heavy cloud cover meant that the sky has gone completely black and it was getting quite cool, no more than 4 degrees Celsius.

On the other hand, however, the rather cold winds that had been blowing throughout the day had died down as well, so the spinosaurus hadn't grown cool enough to become uncomfortable, although it seemed to be thinking about going asleep _on land_.

Naturally, Becker was upset about this. If the spinosaurus went to sleep here in this weather – sure, the temperature was above zero for now but that didn't mean anything, tomorrow morning it could just as well rain or even snow – it would probably never wake up, and Becker would rather not have to transport 6 tons of dead dinosaur around London even before they would begin to smell, so he decided to use gunfire and similar sounds to lure the spinosaurus back through the time anomaly.

Naturally, Connor and Abby objected. They claimed that such sounds were more likely to arouse the carnivore's curiosity as well as its' hunger, and since its' night vision was much better than theirs, this wasn't a risk that they were willing to take unnecessarily, so let's wait for another half an hour before implementing it-

Another time anomaly briefly shimmered in the air, quickly vanishing, but not before out of it flew something relatively large and loud, something that moved with a buzzing sound in a straight line towards the spinosaurus' large sail, flying away in a sharp curve at the nick of time – but it was enough.

The giant dinosaur was on its' hind legs, instantly ready to pursue the new attacker – and more than a bit able. It charged after its' new foe across the Thames' shoreline, splintering and smashing everything in its' path, not unlike the way it could have done in the third movie, with people barely able to get from out of its' path or get trampled.

Snarling and roaring loudly, the spinosaurus followed the ultralight aircraft – if that what it was – into the time anomaly from which it came, and then it snapped shut. "Um, now what?" Becker turned to Connor and Abby. "Was anyone even piloting this thing?"

It was at the point that two dripping figures emerged from Thames' waters and began to move upwards. "Can someone help us down here, or are we just supposed to die from pneumonia or drown or whatever?" one of the figures called out in Danny Quinn's voice.

7.

"What- how- I don't know, is this how you've been handling time anomalies in our absence?" Lester gaped at Jenny and at Lorraine. "You know, the whole neo-technological angle?"

"No – so far the most advanced technology that we used had been a taser, which was used to hit the terror birds in their heads," Jenny admitted.

"Terror birds? What- oh, right, the ones in Abby's 'department', rather controversial fellows in my opinion," Lester said disdainfully. "So, how did it evolve into this?"

"I'm not sure – I'm guessing that there are too many people who just rub each other wrong-"

"Maybe it's just your new friend-"

"Maybe, although what had happened with Sarah and Danny? I thought that Connor told me that the two of them-"

"I don't know," Lester groaned. "I frankly feel that we've been caught in some sort of a cross between a soap opera and a sci-fi show – and the damn French aren't making it any easier!" he turned to his secretary. "Lorraine. Once they're done with the medical wing and what-not, get them to come to the conference room, would you?"

Wordlessly, Lorraine nodded.

8.

For once, the silence in the cars was just that – silence, as Danny Quinn – or Helen Cutter - for example, were too cold and wet to talk, and the others, obviously, had reasons for keeping silence of their own.

Abby, however, never found silence to be too endearing for her tastes, and so she turned to her next-seat neighbour, who was Sarah Page once more. "So, Sarah," Abby said with a desperate brightness, "what's with you and Danny? Before Connor and I got stuck in the Cretaceous the two of you seemed to go somewhere-"

"But because of all the time that we had spent apart we ended up nowhere," Sarah said bitterly. "I mean, long-distance relationships are fine, but when there are no communications between the couple, then there isn't a relationship anymore, per se."

"Not even being in Paris helped?"

"We weren't even in Paris – the island of Corsica is probably the furthest you can get from Paris and still end up in France," Sarah said bitterly. "The closest I was in a big French city was in Nice, which is actually a pretty amazing place – a mix of French and Italian culture with just a dash of Spanish; the architecture-" Sarah caught herself and sighed. "And I was there with the most unromantic people: Becker and his boys, Lester, and, apparently, Danny. He's a great guy, but his idea of romance-"

"Probably the same as Connor's, and Nick wasn't that far ahead, I suspect," Abby said, feeling a bit glum herself, and not because of the weather which was growing steadily colder. "The ARC creates a rather non-romantic working-place atmosphere, you know?.."

"Maybe," Sarah said slowly. "So, uh-"

"You know, the French have pretty much secured the time anomaly on Corsica, and are planning to explore at least _that_ time zone," Becker spoke up suddenly. "It's a good thing that Lewis and Lorraine have begun at least _some_ development of our center-"

"Shut up, Becker!" Sarah snapped. "I was talking!"

As Becker and Sarah began to animatedly argue about France, giant weasels and everything else in general, Abby frowned. Sarah may think that romance was dead, but sexual tension was definitely present – and with a wrong guy!..

A quick glimpse at Danny, who wasn't looking very thrilled at this development confirmed Abby's suspicion – but didn't give her any ideas about how to fix the situation...

9.

"People! You must be wondering why I have called you tonight after the _harrowing_ time with the dinosaur-" Lester began; Abby, however, was in no mood for his theatrics and decided to strike first:

"Because the French have already established a stable time anomaly on Corsica and we need to quickly do something before we're outcompeted?" she suggested wryly.

"Yes, actually," Lester grimaced. "The PM and the rest of the government isn't happy about it, so he is pressuring me to do something about it, lest the French beat us – can the French beat us, doctor Hunter?"

"Please, Mr. Lester, you can call me Helen," the aforementioned 'doctor' just smiled, and then proceeded to look thoughtful. "From what I understood, you encountered giant weasels, really small wild pigs, and several new species of lizards and insects, correct?"

"Yes," Lester nodded warily.

"The weasels had almost sabre-like canines, yes?"

"Correct," Lester rolled his eyes.

"Then the Corsican time anomaly leads to a place in the future very similar to our Pliocene: namely a past-Ice Age world, fresh and undispoiled... I'm sure that Danny Quinn over there can explain it better than I."

Danny growled slightly in irritation, but the others just ignored him. "Past Ice Age world? What kind of nonsense is that, incidentally?" Lester asked instead.

"Lorraine? Can you please send me a memo to bring some sort of time chart of prehistoric climate changes to the office sometime next week?" Helen said calmly. "I bet that it would make life and work so simpler around here, alongside the impromptu time scale that we wrote up yesterday."

"Oh, doctor, that is so funny...yet potentially useful – kind of like yourself," Lester said flatly. "However, this will have to wait – starting tomorrow, the ARC will be doing a mild publicity stunt-"

"How mild?" Sarah immediately asked, noticing that Jenny – now, apparently, reinstalled as the head of the center's PR – didn't look particularly happy at this announcement.

"Oh, I think of making an appointment with a TV station – say, ITV – and showing our local prehistoric celebrities," Lester said airily. "I'm sure it'll all go smoothly, eh?"

Not even Helen could find any appropriate words of response to this question, so Lester adjourned the meeting, and... that was it.

10.

As soon as Lester leaves, everybody's attention focuses on Jenny. "Don't give me that!" the PR agent exhaled. "He actually wanted to through the time anomalies and record the giant lizards, and dinosaurs, and what-not that dwelt there in a natural habitat. Does anyone wants to meet another sail-backed dinosaur in its' natural habitat?"

There was a pause as everybody somehow ended up looking at Connor. "What?" the young man said, innocently. "I remember the whole G-Rex fiasco as well as everyone else present and I remember that dinosaurs and video cameras do not mix. Besides, we still have the terror birds – and they can be almost as good in regards to the whole prehistoric predator drama."

"Yeah – but will they behave?" Jenny asked sceptically. "They don't look very tame yet to me."

"As long as the mammoth is in there, they'll behave," Helen replies instead. "They may not be smart, but they will realize easily that the mammoth can kill them both with one lucky blow – as long as it is close at hand, they will not act too aggressively."

"So, first we have the mammoth and the terror birds, second we have Rex as well as Sid and Nancy and their pups," Jenny says slowly. "Connor, Abby, you're in charge."

"Thanks, Jenny," Abby said a trifle sourly. "We'll get onto it immediately." Then, upon sending Jenny's glare, she softened her attitude somewhat: "Jenny, look, we _are_ grateful for you softening the situation and all, but, well, this has been a trying week and all..."

"So, let's start working on it tomorrow morning," Jenny said slowly. "Oh, and by the way? Lester assigned Christine to do all the secondary paperwork."

Abby twitched – so did Danny actually. "It really is her, then? Not a look-alike?"

Jenny merely nodded. Danny groaned.

"Civil workers returning from the dead and palaeontologists putting on circus acts? Life is never boring around here, is it?"

"No, it's not – that's why I love working here," Jenny agreed.

Outside, the clouds were obscuring the night-time sky. Inside, the ARC employees were figuring out the plans for tomorrow, to start working on them ASAP – in other words, it was life as usual at the Anomaly Research Center.


	9. Responsa Extra Abby deals with stress

**Response extra – Abby deals with stress**

_Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

_Note: This takes place between the seventh chapter and the epilogue of the main story._

Although she was loath to admit it, Abby was not quite aware as to how she made the walk from their car to the ARC's medical wing, and if she _was_ aware, then only dimly: in her mind's eye she still saw the bear-dogs ambush the young herbivore and bring it down using some very neat teamwork. Moreover, she saw herself as well, getting out of their car for real, trying to intervene with the original three bear-dogs and getting torn to pieces as well.

Abby was a good melee fighter by now: she had taken on the leader of the Mer-pack a long time ago, and later on she had confronted an armed and armoured knight over Dragon, their dinosaur mascot, but in these cases, as well as in any others, it was either one-on-one, or it was the full ARC team against several opponents – never nothing else, as it should be. In a straightforward fight, numbers always win, especially if the fight is five on one, whether that 'one' is a prehistoric herbivore or a modern human.

"Abby?" the young woman became aware of a gentle shaking on her arm. "Abby? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, nothing is wrong – Jenny," the blonde managed weakly. "I was just – thinking."

"You were staring straight ahead with glazed eyes and I think you were beginning to drool," Jenny wasn't dissuaded. "The mission went wrong, hasn't it?"

"Well, nobody got hurt...but then again, it wasn't exactly a mission as we tend to see it," Abby confessed. "I mean, there weren't any _people_ hurt and we didn't have to lift a finger to get rid of the animals – all we had to do was to watch those bear-dogs or whatever kill their prey right before us and eat it then and there before they left." To her mortification, Abby felt her face grow moist – very moist. "I know that our heroics are mostly for the people – humans, if you want to get technical – and working at the zoo made me aware of the facts of life, but-"

"But knowing and seeing are not too identical things," Jenny said softly. "Abby, I don't know what to say that will make it all right, but when I went out into the past to confront Helen, I felt certain that I knew what can be coming at me. And let me tell without getting into any greater details – I wasn't. My first time anomaly travel almost killed me – Helen had to actually rescue me from being eaten by several prehistoric dinosaurs or some creatures like that. And then-" Jenny turned red and abruptly shifted her topic. "I know that that is not the same. And we know that Lester would probably declare this occurrence to have been a good thing – you know how he could be-"

"Yeah, but we're not – we may not be heroes, but we have always been in the thick of things: if Nick was alive, or even Danny had been present, we would've done something-"

"No argument there," Jenny nodded, remembering how Danny was able to save the day first with the giganotosaurus and then with the future fungus. "Danny – and Nick – had certain qualities that we lack – all of us."

"Yeah, but Helen, at least, was observant enough to notice the flanking attackers," Abby admitted grudgingly, "and she did save my life for whatever reasons. I guess she's not all bad after all."

Jenny decided not to remind Abby that Helen had saved her life once already, even if for her own reasons – now probably was not the time, while Abby continued.

"It's just that, well, I still feel like we have failed and tried to cut our losses in a best way possible, but-"

"But nothing – we just have to figure out how to deal with prehistoric or future creatures if they come in a group."

"Well, almost straightaway after you left, we had to deal with a bunch of terror birds – different ones from the ones we've got now. Danny managed to lure them back through the time anomaly with a recording. And after that there was this herd of brontotheres – Helen actually saved the day with that time anomaly manifestation device... Yeah, we clearly need new strategies, even when Danny and others return from France," Abby smiled. "You know, Jenny, I am glad that we've had this talk – it did make me feel better."

"So you won't be going to the medics?"

"Just a check-up, just in case," Abby smiled and left.

...When some time later Abby returned, she no longer felt like smiling – once again. But that is another story.


End file.
